Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado  

Brown bag luncheon about the Llano Estacado in the years 1500-1875
April 24, 2011

On Monday, April 25th, at 12:10 p.m., Sibley Nature Center Executive Director Burr Williams will speak on the presettlement history of the Llano Estacado. Please come early and eat lunch in our wildlife viewing room, or along the "Icons of the Llano Estacado Colonnade," or out under the story-telling tree by the parking lot.  Lots of West Texans hunt arrowheads. If you have a small mounted collection, bring it along!  Everybody should know the basics of our home's history.

The Llano Estacado was a foreboding place, even for American Indians, since the end of the Pleistocene. There were a few long-term pithouse communities on the Llano Estacado in the 1100s, but before and after that short period of time, the Llano was only visited seasonally for hunting. Trading groups considered it a long and arduous barrier to be crossed.  Despite that pattern of use, arrowheads, manos and metates and other stone artifacts of the Indians are commonly found on the Llano Estacado.

Until the late 1600s when the Indians managed to procure Spanish horses, visiting hunting parties would wait around the few permanent springs (usually near salinas, the salt lakes.) Waiting in concealment in the arroyos and  pocket forests in the draws,   the Indians hunted buffalo, deer, and pronghorn.  After the Indians began using horses consistently, the Llano Estacado was utilized much more extensively and became less of a barrier for trade and raiding.

After Coronado never found gold on the Great Plains in the 1540s, the Spanish began in returning in the early 1600s to hunt buffalo. By the late 1770s, annual expeditions left the upper Pecos River settlements in late summer with long lines of empty carretas that would return with tons of meat and hundreds of buffalo hides, some of which were destined for sale as far south as Chihuahua City (and even Mexico City in some years.) The hunters were known as Ciboleros.

Over the years, the Ciboleros began trading with the Comanches, and became known as Comancheros. In the Civil War, Union officers in New Mexico began encouraging the Comancheros to trade for Texas (Confederate) cattle, and over a  half-million Longhorns were stolen from Texas. Wiuth such an economic boon, the Comancheros upgraded, and no longer drove the wooden carretas, but big covered wagons.

For many years few United States or Texas citizens visited the Llano Estacado. It was considered unfit for habitation, and known as "the Great American Desert." AlbertFall and some of the last of the mountain men crossed it in the 1830s. A small army of Texans tried to invade New Mexico in the early 1840s, but were driven to desperation by the crossing of the Llano Estacado, and were easily captured.  A number of folks headed to the goldfields of California crossed the southern end beginning in the late 1840s, and for a few years before the Civil War, the Butterfield-Overland stage company ran stages along the same southern route.

With the invention of the steam engine, explorers began looking for a way to build a railroad across the region. For that purpose, Captain Randolph Marcy crossed it in the late 1850s. During the same time period, Captain Pope tried to dig an artesian well near the Pecos River and explored eastward. Charlie Goodnight and other members of the Texas Mounted Rifles visited the Llano Estacado during the Civil War, chasing Comanches driving stolen cattle and horses.

In 1871 Colonel Shafter came from Fort Davis, looking for the refuge of the Quahadi Comanches, the last band still raiding. In 1874, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie sent patrols and companies to scour the Llano Estacado, culminating in the defeat of the Comanches  in Palo Duro Canyon. A few Comanches held out, and Captain Nolan led the ill fated expedition of 1877 when four men died of thirst. By then, Charlie Goodnight had established the first ranch on the Llano Estacado, headquartering in Palo Duro Canyon, along with a number of brave New Mexican pastores running thousands of sheep on the Llano Estacado and the canyons to the east.