Across The Fence: Charles Goodnight, a Man of Indomitable Spirit (Part I)

The date of April 9, 1865, marked the end of four, long and bloody years of the American Civil War. During those years, while the states were divided among themselves, the nation was also at war with the Native Americans of the plains and the Southwest.

Back in April 1865, Bosque Redondo was the name given the so-called reservation near Fort Sumner, N.M., though to the 8,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache Indians confined there, it seemed more like prison.

By 1866, the number of Indians confined on the reservation was nearly double what the U.S. Army was equipped to provide for. The shortage of food supplies was at a critical level and starvation conditions prevailed. Two Texas cattlemen recognized the need for beef by the Army to feed the Indians at Fort Sumner, and together they planned the first drive to supply the needed cattle.

Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were those two men.

From Fort Belknap, Texas, on the Brazos River to Fort Sumner on the Pecos is about 300 miles, as the crow flies. The trail planned by Goodnight and Loving was nearly double that distance. From Fort Belknap, cattle could be driven along the banks of the Brazos for more than a 100 miles, but from the headwaters of the Brazos to Fort Sumner was a 200-mile stretch of little to no water.

Goodnight and Loving would head southwest out of Fort Belknap, away from Fort Sumner, and cross the Colorado and Concho rivers before heading due west to the Pecos. At the Pecos, they would cross at Horsehead Crossing then follow the Pecos all the way to Fort Sumner. Even this route presented stretches where it would take days to travel without water and the ever-present threat of hostile Comanche Indians added to the risks.

To make the trip, Goodnight and Loving knew that they must be well equipped and provisioned. Goodnight purchased a used Studebaker wagon and modified it for the long trip over rugged country. He replaced the wooden axles with steel to withstand the tortuous pounding they would have to take.

At the back of the wagon he built a large, upright box with a lid that swung out and down to make a worktable for the cook. Inside the box were numerous shelves and drawers built to accommodate the necessary supplies and utensils needed for the long days and weeks ahead, over uninhabited country, where it would be impossible to resupply. The wagon was covered with a waterproof canvas, supported with bows, to shed rain and protect the supplies carried inside.

On the outside of the wagon were lashed oak barrels to be filled with water intended for use during the days between watering holes. Underneath the wagon box a tarpaulin was hung for storing firewood and buffalo chips gathered up along the trail and used for cooking fires. The finished product came to be called a chuck wagon and Goodnight's invention would become the most important and popular piece of equipment to accompany the millions of Longhorn cattle that would be trailed north out of Texas.

So on June 6, 1866, Goodnight and Loving left Fort Belknap with about 2,000 head of Longhorn cattle along with 18 well-armed and savvy cowboys and blazed a 600-mile cattle trail that would become known as The Goodnight-Loving Trail.

Among the cowboys on that drive were men who would also become famous in the era of the Texas trail drives; Bose Ikard, Robert Clay Allison and "One-Armed" Bill Wilson joined in that first Goodnight-Loving cattle drive. After more than six weeks on the trail the drive reached Fort Sumner and sold the steers in the herd to the U.S. Army for eight cents a pound and pocketed about $12,000 – paid in gold.

Loving took the remaining cattle that the army did not buy and with a strong contingent of cowboys and drove the rest of the herd another 400 miles north to Denver. Goodnight returned to Texas to put together another herd for trailing to markets in the north.

The following year – in the summer of 1867 – while driving their third herd, Loving went ahead to negotiate contracts for the cattle being trailed. Far ahead of the main herd, he was attacked by a war party of Comanche and was wounded by an arrow. Loving managed to escape the raid and made it to Fort Sumner, however the wound in his arm became infected and gangrene took hold.

Refusing to have his arm amputated, Loving died from the infection. Goodnight reached Fort Sumner with the herd while Oliver was being treated and stayed with him until his death. He asked to be buried in Texas and on the return trip from Denver; Goodnight – as he had promised – took his friend's body back to Weatherford, Texas, for burial.

Goodnight, nown by most as "Charlie," was born in Mocoupin County, Illinois, in March 1836. His father, Charles Goodnight Sr. died just four years later.

Charlie's mother remarried and in 1846 the family moved to Waco, Texas. Growing up along the Brazos, young Charlie learned to track and hunt under the tutelage of Caddo Jake, an old Indian who took and interest in the boy's wilderness education.

For book learning, Charlie was schooled for only six months before the family moved to Texas. At 16, Charlie was employed as a bullwhacker and hauled freight with teams of oxen. At 17, he was in a partnership with his stepbrother running a herd of 400 cattle on shares. In 1857, they moved their herd further north along the Brazos to Black Springs, built a substantial cabin and brought their parents there to live.

It was during this time that Charlie met Loving, who was also running cattle in the area, and the two became fast and loyal friends. Their first joint business venture was during the early days of the Colorado gold rush when they partnered to trail a herd north through the Oklahoma Indian Territory, into Kansas and then west to Colorado and the mining camps in the Rockies.

Increasing conflicts with the Comanche in Northwest Texas compelled Goodnight to join up with Captain Jack Cureton's Texas Rangers, where he served as scout and tracker. In December 1860, it was Goodnight who found the Comanche encampment of Peta Nocona that led to the rescue of Cynthia Ann Parker.

At the call to war, Charlie joined Cureton and the Confederacy, spending the duration fighting Indians and border ruffians in the area surrounded by the Canadian, Colorado and Brazos rivers. The experience gained in tracking and surviving in this vast area known as the Llano Estacado, or "The Staked Plains," would prove to be vital when he and Loving scouted the route that would become The Goodnight-Loving Trail.

After the death of his partner, Goodnight continued to organize and lead cattle drives out of Texas and into New Mexico and Colorado. It was he who received and drove cattle for John Chisum and other prominent cowmen of Texas. It also was Goodnight who sold his Texas cattle to John Wesley Iliff to stock the vast Iliff cattle empire of Colorado and Wyoming, and in 1867, Goodnight established his own Rock Canyon Ranch on the Arkansas River west of Pueblo, Colo.

In July 1870, Goodnight married the lady he had long courted – Mary Ann "Molly" Dyer. She had been a schoolteacher in Weatherford, Texas, and after the Kentucky wedding, they made their home at the Rock Canon Ranch.

During that time, Goodnight continued his cattle drives, established irrigated farming at the ranch, planted an extensive apple orchard and invested in land and lots in and around Pueblo. He established the Colorado Stock Growers Bank, was part owner of the Pueblo opera house and a meat packing plant in Las Animas and also formed the first Colorado Stock Raisers Association. Unfortunately, a declining cattle market, overstocked ranges and the financial panic of 1873 decimated the Goodnight's holdings and he found himself having to start over.

His wife went to stay with relatives in California and he began his quest for new beginnings. In the fall of 1875, Charlie Goodnight gathered up the remnants of his Texas Longhorns – about 1,600 head – and relocated temporarily at a campsite on the Canadian River at Rincon de las Piedras, N,M., where they remained for the winter.

Goodnight knew then that to begin again he needed to find land that had never seen the hooves of cattle. And so, together with a cowboy named Panchito, who also known as "Little Frank" and was a trusted cowhand from Mexico, they set out to scout the vast Texas Panhandle for an uninhabited rangeland of virgin grass.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. Contact him via email at [email protected]