Charles Goodnight

Charles Goodnight led one of the legendary Texas lives. Born in 1836 only three days after Texas declared independence, he was a frontier scout, a Texas Ranger in the Comanche wars, a trail driver and trail blazer, a cattle breeder and raiser, a philanthropist, an early conservationist, and the founder of the first great ranch in the Texas panhandle before he died at ninety three in 1929. He owned herds in the thousands of head that ranged over spreads of dozens of thousands of acres. There is a small town in the panhandle named after him, and the Goodnight and Loving trail was a well known subject to Texas school children in the days when they were taught the state’s history. Several of the characters and events in the book Lonesome Dove including the return of the partner’s body to Texas, the great cattle drive to northern ranges, the character of the cowboy Deets, and the barefoot trek across country to get help for a wounded man seem to be lifted pretty much directly from Goodnight’s experiences. The character Woodrow Call bears a strong resemblance to Goodnight himself.

The book Charles Goodnight Cowman and Plainsman is a lengthy biography of Goodnight by the historian J. Evetts Haley. Haley had the advantage of knowing Goodnight during the last years of the rancher’s life, and much of the material comes from Goodnight’s own recollections. He tells a fascinating and compelling story that should be enjoyed by anyone interested in the West, in the history of Texas, or just in a good story about the dynamic and interesting life of a great figure in a rough and unsettled frontier. He does a good job of bringing to life times now seeming ever more remote. I liked the book a lot.

My only serious criticism of the book is that the author does not always do a good job of keeping things straight and clear with respect to chronology. A reader may at times have to wonder too much about exactly what things happened when and before or after what others. Still it is a fine book about an interesting life and a wonderful time.

Triggernometry

I just finished Triggernometry by Eugene Cunningham, a book about the careers of the famous gunfighters of the old west. It is told through a series of short biographies of characters such as Tom Horn, Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Wild Bill Hickock, John Hughes, and a number of others. It also includes a final chapter on the techniques of some of the famous gunfighters. It was published in 1934. The author worked at a time when many participants in and witnesses to the events of the post-Civil War west were still alive and available as sources. He was a friend or acquaintance of several of his main subjects and drew on them for firsthand accounts. The result is a book full of interesting stories. I found it fascinating and learned a lot from it both about its particular subjects and the times. It is not any sort of definitive academic history, partly because such was not the intent and partly because, as the author says, a lot of the events on the frontier in those days were not documented, and tales and recollections after the fact varied. Still the book rings true, and the author seems usually to have made a decent effort to sort out what is most likely.

That said, there are problems. The author was a southerner born in 1896 and had a view of Yankees, Reconstruction, and black people that is typical of that place and time. He grew up under the shadow of the Civil War as a citizen of the still resentful defeated side. His prejudices show up in the book from time to time particularly when at least partially whitewashing the crimes of several Texas criminals against blacks and members of the occupation forces during Reconstruction. He also has a particularly critical and really somewhat bitter view of those such as Hickock and the Earps who were associated with the Union side or with Yankee Kansas. The prejudices are obvious enough, though, that it is easy to take them into account in forming judgments.