History of the Trail
Texas herds were taken up
the Shawnee Trail as early as the 1840s, and use of the route
gradually increased. But by 1853 trouble had begun to plague some
of the drovers. In June of that year, as 3,000 cattle were trailed
through western Missouri, local farmers blocked their passage and
forced the drovers to turn back. This opposition arose from the
fact that the longhorns carried ticks that bore a serious disease
that the farmers called Texas fever. The Texas cattle were immune
to this disease; but the ticks that they left on their bedgrounds
infected the local cattle, causing many to die and making others
unfit for marketing. Some herds avoided the blockades, and the
antagonism became stronger and more effective. In 1855 angry
farmers in western and central Missouri formed vigilance
committees, stopped some of the herds, and killed any Texas cattle
that entered their counties. Missouri stockmen in several county
seats called on their legislature for action. The outcome was a
law, effective in December of that year, which banned diseased
cattle from being brought into or through the state. This law
failed of its purpose since the longhorns were not themselves
diseased. But farmers formed armed bands that turned back some
herds, though others managed to get through. Several drovers took
their herds up through the eastern edge of Kansas; but there, too,
they met opposition from farmers, who induced their territorial
legislature to pass a protective law in 1859.
During the Civil War the
Shawnee Trail was virtually unused. After the war, with Texas
overflowing with surplus cattle for which there were almost no
local markets, pressure for trailing became stronger than ever. In
the spring of 1866 an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 longhorns were
pointed north. Although some herds were forced to turn back, others
managed to get through, while still others were delayed or diverted
around the hostile farm settlements. James M. Daugherty, a Texas
youth of sixteen, was one who felt the sting of the vigilantes.
Trailing north his herd of 500 steers, he was attacked in
southeastern Kansas by a band of Jayhawkers dressed as hunters. The
mobsters stampeded the herd and killed one of the trail hands;
(some sources say they tied Daugherty to a tree with his own picket
rope, then whipped him with hickory switches.) After being freed
and burying the dead cowboy, Daugherty recovered about 350 of the
cattle. He continued at night in a roundabout way and sold his
steers in Fort Scott at a profit. With six states enacting laws in
the first half of 1867 against trailing, Texas cattlemen realized
the need for a new trail that would skirt the farm settlements and
thus avoid the trouble over tick fever. In 1867 a young Illinois
livestock dealer, Joseph G. McCoy, built market facilities at
Abilene, Kansas, at the terminus of Chisholm Trail. The new route
to the west of the Shawnee soon began carrying the bulk of the
Texas herds, leaving the earlier trail to dwindle for a few years
and expire. www.theshawneetrail.com