Essays
Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado
Charlie Goodnight and the Charlies Goodnight Historical Center
September 28, 2005
On October 28th and 29th, 2005 the Sibley Nature Center is hosting a living history event, as you might have noted in our column in the Midland Reporter Telegram. Our Honorary Chairperson for the event is Montie Goodin, the Executive Director of the Charles Goodnight Historical Center in Goodnight, Texas.
Ms. Goodin is hosting a ribbon cutting on October 4th at 3:00 p.m. at her facility one mile south of Goodnight, and we hope that you might attend. Texas Agricultural Commissioner Susan Combs is the featured speaker at the event. Goodnight is 30 miles southeast of Amarillo on U.S. 287.
The Sibley Nature Center is being honored on a plaque describing a Midland Arts Assembly Buffalo named “Goodnight” that will be sent to Ms. Goodin’s project. Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight saved the American buffalo.
J. Evett Haley’s book on Charles Goodnight should be required reading for every person that lives on the Llano Estacado. Andy Wilkinson, a Lubbock musician and relative of Charles Goodnight, created a musical about him. This production should become a staple of schools and community theatres of the region. Both endeavors indicate the importance of Charles Goodnight in the culture of the area. Ms. Goodin’s facility is yet another indication of the value of preserving our past and educating every generation of that past.
Mr. Goodnight was a just man, treating everyone with respect, as evidence by his relationship with Quanah Parker and his comments about Jose Piedad Tafoya. He was the ultimate plainsman of his time period, superbly analytical about what he observed. Goodnight was an innovator as well, crossbreeding cattle and buffalo to create a grazing animal that was adapted to the shortgrass prairies of the high plains. And as all of us citizens of the Llano Estacado should now, he pioneered the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail that took Texas cattle across the southern Llano Estacado and Horsehead Crossing to markets in New Mexico and Colorado.
The following passage, quoted from Mr. Haley’s book, is Goodnight’s description of a plainsman and scout. Haley compiled it from his notes, J. Frank Dobie’s unpublished manuscript on Goodnight, and a letter from Goodnight to a Mrs. G.A. Brown. For me, it has always been the best description ever written about the utility of knowledge about nature and the behavior of animals and plants.
“He must have the faculty of reading men accurately, and he must have their full confidence – they must have faith in their guide. He must have the faculty of not only seeing the tracks and other evidence of the Indians, but a good scout or plainsman must be able to tell how old the tracks are. To do so he must be an accurate judge of temperature and the effect of the sun. If he sees a broken twig, a broken blade of grass, or a bit of wood cut off by a horse’s hoof, he must be able to tell how long it has been withering. It is easy to determine whether a track has been made before or after daylight. A track made during the night will be marked over with minute insect tracks. Even on desert sands this is true. By getting down and putting his eye close to the ground, the scout can observe the insect tracks.”
“To read sounds correctly will have much to do with his ability as a scout, as much of his experience will be in exploring wild and untrodden countries. The old time plainsman, if he was a good one, could detect the most skillful imitation of any animal sound. The Indians often used those imitations to locate themselves at night. But no man’s cry of bird or beast could deceive him. The wild turkey may be fooled by a quill, the doe may be deceived by a mechanical bleat; the anxious mother cow may be lured by a cowboy’s counterfeit of the calf’s bawling; a coon may be drawn from a tree by sounds of coon fighting imitated by some boy. But the trained ear of a plainsman cannot be so deceived.”
“One thing to remember is that the human voice echoes more than any other; in fact it almost alone of all voices echoes at all. The hoot of an owl will not echo in a canyon anything like an Indian’s hooting. The lobo wolf’s cry will echo more than any other wild animal sound. Of course, on the Staked Plains we do not have this advantage, as there is nothing to create an echo, but in the mountains and canyons and broken country the old Indian warriors I have talked with agree with me that no human can exactly imitate the sound of beast or bird.”
“When I was scouting on the Plains, I was always mighty glad to see a mesquite bush. In a dry climate – the climate natural to the mesquite – its seed seemed to spring up only from the droppings of an animal. The only animal on the plains that ate mesquite beans was the mustang. After mesquite seed was soaked for a while in the bowels of a horse and was dropped it germinated quickly. Now mustangs rarely grazed out from water more than three miles, that is, when they had the country to themselves. Therefore, when I saw a mesquite bush I used to know that water was within three miles. All I had to do after seeing the bush was to locate the direction of the water. The scout had to be familiar with the birds of the region, to know those that watered each day, like the dove, and those that lived long without watering, like the quail. On the Plains, of an evening, he could take the course of doves as they went off into the breaks for water. But the easiest of all birds to judge from was that known on the Plains as the dirt-dauber, the swallow. He flew low, and if his mouth was empty he was going to water. He went straight, too. If his mouth had mud in it, he was coming straight from water. If mustangs were strung out and walking steadily along, they were going to water. If they were scattered, frequently stopping to take a bite of grass, they were coming from water."