DV Info Net - UWOL 25- Red River Survivors

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UWOL 25- Red River Survivors – Mike Sims

Treasure almost lost but saved; almost lost again, saved again.

NOTE: For best effect, before viewing imagine you have just had a big tin plate of pinto beans and cornbread and are now sitting around the Chuck Wagon cook-fire.

This story is of the type known as a Cowboy Campfire Story which is a type of Tall Tale for which Texas was once famous (or infamous). As a tall tale it is based upon many facts, none of which are allowed in any way to interfere with the telling of the tale. This is a true story. Sort of.

Here are some of those facts:
Charles Goodnight is famous to the world for such things as starting the great cattle drives, inventing the Chuck Wagon and blazing the Goodnight Trail. In the Texas Panhandle the Goodnights are famous as agents of civilization. They founded and funded the first banks, colleges, libraries and fire departments in the region. Their graves are still much visited.

Palo Duro Canyon is known as “the Grand Canyon of Texas”. Goodnight originally started the ranch with his partner George Adair (pronounced like “a dare” with the accent on the “a”) in the upper canyon in the vicinity of Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Later they split and the Goodnights moved down canyon to the area that is now Caprock Canyons State Park. The two parks are about fifty miles apart as the buzzard flies or about 150 miles apart by good road (as in “you can’t get there from here”). The original Goodnight homestead was located just outside the first park and in the 1950’s it was lovingly disassembled and reassembled inside the park. I remember playing in it as a boy. Eventually it collapsed and an almost identical new structure using a few of the original timbers was built. This is the dugout home in the video.

Goodnight originally tried to drive the bison from the canyon- several times. They came back. He finally gave up and tolerated them. He allowed the buffalo hunt to get rid of them. The bit about Molley (Mary) chastising him is true enough- as told by her in later years. He did bottle feed the calves. They each drank three gallons of cow’s milk a day. Although he looked and looked the three older survivors were found by neighbors and brought to him. Without them and their knowledge of what it means to be a wild bison the calves would have just become furry cows. [By the way, a recent genetic study shows that Texas Longhorns trace their line directly back to the first dozen cattle brought to the New World by Columbus.] Goodnight originally wanted to save a few bison to cross them with cattle in an effort to improve his stock to local conditions. He was the first to do so and called them beefalo. The bovine genes which plague our surviving bison herds can be traced back to his experiments. Fortunately he was an early proponent of barbed wire and he scrupulously kept his “wild ‘uns” from his beefalo. After he died, his relatives had the experimental herd slaughtered along with most of the bison. The ones which survived were across the wire on Adair’s ranch at the time.

The bison weren’t quite forgotten. In the 1970’s the owners proposed to kill them off in what they promoted as “The Last Great Buffalo Hunt”. It was to cost $100,000 per hunter. Public outcry put an end to the plan. We think. It is interesting to note that none of the substantial deposits to hunt were returned and that in this time period the herd mysteriously dropped from 180 to about 30. It is alleged that the hunt took place in secret and, once again, the ones which survived were across the wire at the time.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department didn’t exactly jump at the offer. At first they said “No”. Two years later a German bison genetics researcher urged them to reconsider and protect the herd because it was so valuable. Of the various herds of all five surviving species of bison this was the only one with pure bison genes from one species. [Most of the bison in North America have genes from cattle and almost all of the Plains Bison include genes from Wood Bison. The three Eurasian species have all acquired genes from North America.] At that point the bison hadn’t been seen in two years and it took five days of searching from an airplane to locate them. Unfortunately there was the genetic bottleneck (it probably wouldn’t have occurred if all 180 had survived the ‘70s). Yellowstone does not have any stock only from the Goodnight line. All of their bison include genes from all the early surviving herds. Many of them also have cattle and Wood Bison genes. There are some small groups which are free of the foreign species genes but all of the Yellowstone bison now carry Brucellosis and federal law prevents their transfer. [Brucellosis is a cattle disease which bison can carry. It does not harm the bison but infected cattle have very reduced reproduction. Ranchers hate it because it destroys their profits.] The best compromise turned out to be the stock from Ted Turner (media mogul and largest land owner west of the Mississippi as well as ardent conservationist), which originally came from Yellowstone, because they were free of cattle genes. The jury is still out on the effect of the new genes but we are cautiously optimistic.

I shot this over a period of three days and had some trouble cutting it together because one day was quite overcast with poor light, the next bright sunshine and the last mixed clouds. I did the best I could to combine them. Comments and critique are welcomed.

In the note I mentioned pinto beans and cornbread. There is an awfully lot of, to my mind, truly awful wheat-flour and egg based “corncake” going around as cornbread now, so I take the liberty of giving you an authentic cornbread recipe. I have made it this way literally hundreds of times.

Cowboy Cornbread

In a well seasoned cast-iron skillet melt three big wallops of grease, lard or shortening.

In a big bowl put-
two right-smarts of masa, cornmeal or Indian Meal
a pinch of salt
two big pinches of baking powder
a small dab of sugar (if available)

Stir in unsweetened tinned milk until soupy (fresh milk if available).
Pour in the melted fat and stir then pour back into the skillet and bake over the coals of a good fire until the bread is done when it pulls away from the sides and just begins to crack on top.

Sorry. I can’t share with you my family’s secret recipe for pinto beans. I might git shot.