Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Fiberglass buffaloes in Windlands Park are great Interpretations of a Llanero Icon
January 14, 2004

Seeing the painted fiberglass buffaloes out in Windlands Park in last week made me really appreciate the efforts of the Midland Arts Assembly. It is grand -- having interpretations by local artists of a major icon of the Llano Estacado's past visible to the public.

Seeing images of buffaloes make my imagination go into overdrive! Five million buffalo once ranged from the Arkansas and Canadian Rivers in the summer all the way to the Concho and San Saba Rivers in the winter. In the spring, as the herd moved north, family groups of old female buffaloes and their female offspring would break off from the herd in valleys with water and good grass. The bulls ranged in small groups of their own, only joining the females for breeding. During breeding violent clashes would occur among the males until the strongest established dominance.

In July the bulls butted heads and gored each other in tussles lasting days. During the breeding season they bellowed out in deep rumbling tones that could be heard for miles -- supposedly even from over the horizon. The big mop of hair on their heads, and their thick skulls cushioned the blows. Losers drifted off, and the oldest bulls wandered off to retirement, remaining in small groups for the rest of their life. Bull Creek in Borden County was named in recognition of this habit. Bull Creek was also a wintering camp for Comanches. Comanches preferred to eat the meat of yearlings and fat cow buffaloes, so it makes me wonder if the bulls were ignored by the Comanches. Animal intelligence is difficult to discern, but it seems possible that the bulls realized they were relatively safe near the Comanche camps. The Indians did kill bulls for making war shields and horned buffalo headresses, but the numbers of bulls needed for this reason were limited.

In the fall the buffalo would mass for migration. Countless anecdotes by early explorers and buffalo hunters tell of the times that so many buffalo were present that a herd would take two days to pass. These herds were sometimes 25 miles across. After they passed, the ground would be as bare as a cotton field. By the time the buffalo returned, the grasses would normally have regrown, but in years of drought, the migratory trails would shift.

So much of the history of the buffalo on the Llano Estacado has faded away. At the Haley Library is a volume of information that J. Evetts Haley put together about buffalo from his 600 interviews with oldtimers. Other historians have attempted to document the fluctuations of buffalo populations from the reports and diaries of early army leaders and settlers and compare that information with the records of the episodic droughts of the region. For example, in the 1840's, many Indians died of starvation due to an "almost complete disappearance" of buffalo from the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers.

Hispanic settlers of northern New Mexico ventured out to the Llano Estacado to hunt buffalo for over a hundred years. Often they had to cross the Llano and venture into the breaks of the Red, Brazos, and Concho Rivers to find the buffalo. Only in the wettest of years did they find big herds of buffalo on the Llano Estacado. In 1871 Colonel John Shafter led army troops to the Llano Estacado from the west, first crossing the sanddunes and then as far east as Mustang Springs. He reported he saw no buffalo south of the Mustang and Monument Draws. The sanddunes north of the draws seemed to be a determining factor.

Charlie Goodnight and other cattledrovers of the 1860s and 1870s rarely sighted buffalo along the Pecos River. They were sometimes seen, however, on the long dry stretch along the Emigrant Trail from the Concho River to Horsehead Crossing, which indicates the buffalo came further south on the Llano Estacado during wet years. When the Anglo buffalo hunters began the massive kill-off of the herd, the buffalo reacted by going further west than normal. The buffalo hunters often did their killing near the favorite watering areas of the buffalo, and once disturbed, the buffalo left their normal range.

George Causey had a hunting camp at Yellowhouse Lake near present day Littlefield in 1877 and 1878, and then moved to the western Llano of eastern New Mexico, where he continued to kill buffalo until 1882 -- but in always diminishing numbers. He hauled their hides to Midland, along with dried antelope meat. Wes Harris, from northern Lea County, told me that as a kid in the 1950s he could still find the almost completely decayed skulls of buffalo near the playas known as Ranger Lake and the Four Lakes. Five buffalo ranged along the Pecos River until the early 1890s, according to Clayton Williams Sr.

One of the myths of the last days of the buffalo might explain the presence of those buffalo on the Pecos. O.W. Williams, father of Clayton Sr., was surveying on the Llano Estacado in 1877 and 1878, and in 1878 observed a stampede of buffalo headed south. Other early adventurers on the Llano also told of buffalo headed south, and the myth grew into a tale that told of the herd pushing south, across the Trans-Pecos mountain ranges and on into the mountains of northern Mexico.

Speaking of myths, a number of Indian tales relate that buffalo "emerged" from a great canyon or cave someplace on the Llano Estacado. More than likely, the story developed from the fact that buffalo sometimes wintered in the Palo Duro and Tule Canyons and would climb up on the Llano Estacado to graze. One can not see the canyons until the edge is reached, so it would have been a magical sight to suddenly see buffalo appearing up and over the edge, suddenly present where none had been seconds before.

The New Mexican Ciboleros sent huge trains of "carretas" (carts) and later wagons from the Pecos River valley to the buffalo hunting grounds. Some of the trains had 100 wagons, 200 men, and sometimes even women and children. Many of the towns along the Pecos were "genizaro" towns, whose people were of both Spanish and Comanche heritage. Comanches sometimes married into the families and lived in the towns, and sometimes the genizaros would join Comanche cousins on the plains. When the Ciboleros returned from the buffalo prairie there would be a grand entry procession and then a fiesta lasting for days.

Hispanic settlers from the Presidio area also visited the buffalo hunting grounds as well. One folk tale relates the story of "El Cibolo" from the Presidio area (cibolo is an old Spanish word for buffalo) who came to the Llano Estacado as early as 1800. El Cibolo finally ran into difficulties with the Spanish soldiers that tried to regulate such hunting, and after attacking the soldiers evidently joined the Comanches. Mucho Toro and Bajo del Sol were Comanche leaders forty years later, and were obviously of Hispanic heritage, which makes me wonder if they were not the sons of El Cibolo. During that time period, the Comanches began raiding deep into Mexico, which also makes me make giant leaps of supposition -- what if El Cibolo told the Comanches about the poorly defended towns in Mexico and lead them on the first raids?

Good golly, Miss Molly! Buffalo do indeed fan the fires of imagination!