The Cattle Drive

 

Map

 

Life on the Trail

 

The Chisholm Trail

The Chisholm Trail was a dirt trail used in the later 19th century to drive cattle overland from ranches in Texas to Kansas railheads. The trail stretched from southern Texas across the Red River, and on to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway in Abilene, Kansas, where the cattle would be sold and shipped eastward.

The trail is named for Jesse Chisholm who had built several trading posts in what is now western Oklahoma before the American Civil War. He died in 1868, too soon to ever drive cattle on the trail.

 

The Chuckwagon

Cowboy Recipes

The chuck wagon

A Typical Cook’s Day on a Cattle Drive
Before sunrise Get up and start fixing breakfast. Breakfast was often sourdough bread or
biscuits and gravy, dried fruit and coffee.
Wake the horse wrangler.

Wake the cowboys and call them to breakfast.
Wash dishes, pack the wagon and move up the trail.
The cook would move ahead of the cattle because he could move faster with his team of horses.

11:00 a.m. Make a new camp and have lunch ready by noon. A typical lunch might include
chili or stew with bread, coffee and water. Lunch time gave the cowboys a
chance to rest and the cattle time to graze.

1:00 p.m. Pack the chuck wagon and ride toward the evening's campsite.

5:00 p.m. Set up the night camp and prepare a dinner of beans, biscuits, and coffee to be
ready about 6:30. Dinner might include dessert, such as a fruit cobbler.

9:00 p.m. Go to bed. Unlike the cowboys, the cook did not have to take a turn watching
the cattle at night.

 

Songs Around the Campfire

Whoopee Ti-Yi-Yo
 
As I was a-walkin’ one mornin’ for pleasure,
I spied a cowpuncher a-lopin’ along.
His hat was throwed back and his spurs was a-jinglin’
And as he approached he was singin’ this song:
 
Chorus
Whoopee ti-yi-yo, git along little dogies,
For you know that Wyoming’ll be your new home.
Whoopee ti-yi-yo, git along little dogies,
For you know that Wyoming’ll be your new home.
 
It’s early in spring that we round up the dogies.
We mark them and brand them and bob off their tails.
We round up the horses, load up the chuckwagon,
And then throw the dogies up on the long trail.
Chorus
Your mother was raised away down in Texas,
Where the jimson weed and sandburs grow.
Now we’ll fill you up on prickly pear and cholla,
Till you are all ready for the trail to Idaho.
Chorus
Oh, you’ll be soup for Uncle Sam’s Injuns,
“It’s beef, heap beef!” I hear them cry.
Git along, git along, git along little dogies;
You’ll be beef steers by and by.
 
Chorus