Across The Fence: Buffalo Baron, Charles Rath

On July 30, 1902, Charles Rath, the son of Johann Christian and Philomene Bertha Rath, died at the home of his sister and brother-in-law in Los Angeles.

His headstone in the Rosedale Cemetery is simply inscribed, "Charles Rath Plainsman 1836-1902"

In 1848, when Charles was 12, the Rath family immigrated to the U.S. from Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Five years later, in 1853, it is said that Charles "ran away from home."

Perhaps it was the lure of the West that pulled Charles from the family's Ohio farm to William Bent's trading post on the banks of the Arkansas River. It was there that Charles embarked in the freighting business hauling trade goods and supplies along the Santa Fe Trail across the plains of Kansas Territory.

Letters home, from Charles, to his brothers Christian and William painted a picture of adventure and prosperity on the vast, unsettled plains and urged them to also, come west to the land of opportunity. The brothers were quick to respond and together planned to establish themselves in the ever-growing frontier.

Later, after the death of Charles' mother, his father and sister Louisa, left Ohio and also settled in Kansas. On the banks of Mill Creek, the brothers dug a channel from the creek to power a gristmill that they had constructed using stones and timber from the surrounding area. The mill was quite successful until a flood in 1858 swept it away.

Charles briefly returned to the freighting business until he heard of the untimely death of one George Peacock in 1860. Peacock owned the Peacock Ranch and trading post on Walnut Creek near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River.

In a surprise attack led by the Kiowa warrior Satank, Peacock and his employees were killed leaving the post empty and available. Charles jumped at the opportunity and acquired the business and all of the legal holdings that Peacock had accumulated. In order to gain the goodwill of the Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Northern Comanche who claimed the area as their traditional ground, Charles took a Cheyenne woman as his wife.

In 1861, the couple had a daughter who they named Cheyenne Belle. Two years later, amid rising hostilities between white settlers and the local tribes, Charles' Cheyenne wife supposedly persuaded him to leave for his own safety.

For whatever reason, Charles did leave, released his wife from the marriage and returned to his fallback trade of freighting to deliver supplies to the military posts along the Santa Fe Trail.

Besides the freighting business, Charles hired out to hunt game for the railroad workers who were building track across Kansas. In the days of westward expansion, hunting game for railroad crews meant killing buffalo.

In 1869, Charles returned for a short time to his old adopted home state of Ohio. While visiting old family friends, Charles was reacquainted with a childhood friend, Caroline Markley. After a brief courtship the two were married and in 1870 the bride and groom moved to Topeka, Kan., where they lived but a short time before moving on to Osage City.

In Osage City, Charles established a mercantile, resumed his freighting operations and continued his speculative real estate investments. In the early years of the 1870s, Charles Rath was among the first to take advantage of the booming market for buffalo hides.

Recognizing the potential for profit, Charles moved his mercantile and family to Dodge City, Kan., (earlier known as Hide City) in September 1872.

Even before the move to Dodge, Charles had been active in the hunting, freighting and marketing of buffalo hides. It was not uncommon for the hide yard at the Rath Mercantile Company to be stacked with 70,000 to 80,000 hides at a time.

Buffalo hunting for sport and profit began in earnest with the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad through the mid-west and into the Great Plains. The railroad effectively divided the buffalo herds which consisting of tens of millions of animals into two distinct herds, known thereafter as the northern herds and the southern herds.

The northern herds were the first to be slaughtered to near extinction. The killing for meat by hunters supporting the appetites of a huge and hungry force of rail workers actually had little effect on the herds. It is said that Buffalo Bill Cody killed more than 1,000 buffalo when he hunted for the Union Pacific. The Native American population killed many more than that, but in numbers surpassing millions, the total annual harvest of buffalo made scarcely a dent in the overall population. And the Indian used every part of the animal for food, shelter, tools, and other necessities.

Hunting, or rather wanton killing, for sport and profit was far more destructive than any harvesting for food and necessities could have ever been. There are numerous accounts of railroad passengers firing from open windows into the great herds that stood beside the tracks. As the train continued on, the dead and, dying beasts lay on the prairie, food only for prairie wolves and buzzards. Other hunting parties would kill for only the prime meat from the hump and the popular delicacy, the tongue. The rest was left to rot.

With industrialization in the east, it was found that buffalo hide could be used for drive belts on machinery along with other uses and demand for buffalo hides spiked. Hide hunters killed only for the hides, setting up "stands" where hundreds of buffalo were killed at a time, then skinned, leaving the carcass for carrion.

And finally, there was the official government policy of extermination of the buffalo to force the Indians into starvation and surrender. It has been estimated that for every five buffalo slaughtered for their hides, only two hides were marketed.

The southern herd was the larger of the two main herds and was the first to be exterminated, beginning in 1874 and ending the year 1878. The decimating hunts in the northern herds began in 1880 and by 1884 the herds were gone. In the year 1882 alone, 200,000 hides were shipped out of Dakota Territory. It is estimated that, in the north, there were nearly 5,000 hunters and skinners making a living on the slaughter of buffalo at $2 per hide.

As the last remnants of the southern herd migrated to the southwestern regions of Texas, Charles Rath and his hide hunters followed. Rath established a mercantile near the site of the old ruins of Adobe Walls and supplied his hunters with the supplies needed to continue the slaughter. When the buffalo had been diminished below the threshold of profitability Charles Rath turned to the collection and sale of the buffalo bones that littered the plains.

In Texas, the bone business began in earnest in 1870.

Freighters would fill their empty wagons, when returning from Santa Fe, and pile the bones along the railway of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Later, bone roads were established from out in the expanse of prairie to the rails, where as many as 100 bone wagons would travel together.

One ox-drawn wagon with its two trailers could haul up to 10,000 pounds of bones. Bones were gathered in the prairie, sold to agents and piled beside the railroad for later pick up and delivery to the east. In 17 months between July 1877 and November 1878 there were 3,333 tons of buffalo bones shipped from San Antonio, Texas.

From 1880 to 1888, bone prices soared from the old price of $3 a ton to as much as $23 per ton. Old bones were ground into meal while the more fresh picks went to refineries where the powdered calcium was used to neutralize cane-juice acid in sugar production and good quality bones were used for buttons.

Some trackside Texas bone piles stretched for half a mile along the rails, lay thirty feet wide and sixteen feet high. At an average price of $6 a ton, Texas alone shipped out more than $3 million dollars in buffalo bones.

When both the living and dead buffalo no longer provided profits to Charles Rath and other dealers, Charles was left with nothing. His real estate investments were ill advised and he found no future prospects. He and Caroline, his second wife, had divorced and the three children from that marriage had scattered to other places. Charles had remarried twice more, each ending in divorce. The only grandchild that Charles ever saw was the child of Cheyenne Belle, the daughter from his first wife.

As future prospects diminished and debts accumulated on failed land speculations, Charles left the Great Plains that had lured him to fortune and went to live with his sister Louise in Los Angeles. His death at age 66 was attributed to "mitral insufficiency," a medical term more simply defined as a malfunction of the heart.

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