Mustangs pulled the stage to Brownsville

Rev. W.E. Caldwell was a passenger on a new stage line that began running from Corpus Christi to Brownsville in 1873. He wrote about the experience of traveling in a stagecoach pulled by half-wild mustang ponies.

"A mustang is about as wild a thing as nature affords," Caldwell wrote. "The harnessing of six of these creatures is an exciting scene. With much ado, and by mere force of muscle, the harness is fastened upon them. The driver, reins in hand, is seated on the coach and requests that the passengers sit perfectly still.

"He orders the handlers to hold fast to the bit of each horse until the word is given. This serious proceeding awakens various suspicions that something is going to happen. The command is then given to turn them loose.

"The handlers let go and jump out of the way. The horses fly off in all directions while the stage stands still and you fear they will never start.

"But suddenly, they do start like the furies and go like the whirlwind describing uncertain curves over the prairies. Then you begin to fear that they will never stop.

"However, you soon perceive that on such smooth and level ground there can be no danger and your only concern is that they be kept going in the right direction. The speed is kept up without a halt until the next station, 15 or 20 miles distant, is reached. And then the same exciting scene is re-enacted."

A line of stages from Corpus Christi to Brownsville was still in operation in the 20th Century, until the "Brownie" railroad began running in 1904.


Long before the ranch roundups, there were "cow hunts" in South Texas. Neighbors would gather and go out as a group -- called a crowd -- looking for each other's cattle, which could stray for a great distance when there were no fences.

Sometimes a dozen or more men would form a cow-hunting crowd. They would take extra horses and provisions, which were carried in a wallet, a sack with both ends tied and an opening in the middle. The cow hunters would ride over a large territory accumulating a herd of their own and their neighbors' cattle. The herd would be driven to the closest corral where the cattle belonging to the men on the hunt would be cut out, marked, branded, and altered.

Joseph Almond, a rancher in what was then western Nueces County, often wrote about cow hunts in his diary of ranch life during the 1860s and 1870s.

In diary entries for 1862 and 1863, Almond described cow hunts that lasted for several days and covered a large territory. In the process of roping one calf, Almond broke its neck. Horses were often crippled or gored by a mad bull, which is why each rider took a string of two or three horses. It was dangerous work; those long horns weren't there for decoration.

Thomas Noakes, a rancher at Nuecestown, who also kept a diary, took part in a cow hunt in October, 1860. "About a dozen of us started our last cattle hunt of the fall... We rode to Rincon below Corpus and round up the cattle there. We then hunt the prairie back of Corpus and took our cattle back to Corpus to pen them."

These cow hunts consumed much of the early ranchers' time. They were discontinued not long after the Civil War, replaced by the more organized roundups in which the work was done by hired cowboys and vaqueros.


The vaqueros of South Texas -- and by that I mean Tejano and Mexican ranch hands -- taught the early cowboys how to handle half-wild longhorn cattle. The cowboy's colorful language is full of mangled Spanish root words they borrowed from vaqueros.

There was another skill the vaqueros taught the cowboys. That was how to make and handle rawhide lariats and bullwhips. These were often made with consummate skill and patience, as described by J. Frank Dobie in "The Longhorns."

Making the long, plaited rawhide whips and lariats became an art form. Dobie said no machine ever invented could cut the leather thongs like a vaquero. A large hide would be stretched on the ground. A hole the size of a dollar would be cut in the center. Then strips were cut round and round until there were four strands of equal length. They were scraped of hair, soaked in ashes and water, greased, and plaited together to make a bullwhip or a lariat for roping. Part of the talent was in knowing when to widen or narrow the strips, depending on the thickness of the hide, so that when they dried they would be the same width.

For texture, flexibility, balance of weight, and even beauty, Dobie wrote, the skill in making these rawhide bullwhips and lariats (la reata) could not be equaled.

Roping a wild turkey

There was also great skill in using them. J. Williamson Moses, a mustanger of the 1850s, saw Cristobal Benavides (brother of the famous Confederate general from Laredo, Santos Benavides) rope a wild turkey as it had risen to fly.

"We had seen a couple of fat gobblers between the Pintas and San Fernando creeks, and gave chase," Moses wrote. Cristobal, spurring his pony, threw his cabestro over the turkey, just as he was four or five feet from the ground, with his wings spread. It caught him around the neck and under one wing. It was a beautiful throw of the lasso, neatly and gracefully done."

A skilled vaquero, it was said, could pick a fly off a fence post with his rawhide bullwhip. The pop these whips made sounded like a pistol shot. In the book "Rincon," a family traveled to the Rio Grande Valley by wagon down the old stage road (probably the same route Caldwell took in 1873). They came on a flock of wild geese and just as the geese took wing, the vaqueros traveling with them spurred their horses to ride into the midst of the geese, popping their bullwhips in the air. They brought down several wild geese, plucked from the air by men on horseback with rawhide whips. The geese, mixed with a little flour and water and cooked in an iron pot covered with hot coals, made them a fine supper.

Murphy Givens is Viewpoints Editor of the Caller-Times. Phone: 886-4315; e-mail: