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| Charles Foxwing Goodnight |
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| Oliver Loving |
CHARLES GOODNIGHT
PARKER COUNTY-TEXS
I UNDERSTAND YOU WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH FORT
STANTON –(STOP)- I CAN MEET YOU AT FORT SUMNER IN JUNE –(STOP)- WILL TAKE
FIFTEEN OR TWENTY DAYS –(STOP)-GOOD WATER AND GRAZE THE WHOLE
DISTANCE-(STOP)-YOU CONTACT FORT STANTON TO SET UP CONTRACT –(STOP)-OLIVER
6:45AM
TRANSLATION IN DEPTH…. Charles, I know you may
find this telegram troublesome( Charles
could not read or write) maybe your friend Molly can help you
out. I understand from your wire that
you want to go together and take some beeves down to Ft. Stanton in July.
I can meet you in Ft. Sumner the first of June and gather up what we need
since we both have a large number just getting fat and sassy because they
didn’t take what that asked for the last time. I figure it will take us
15 - 20 days. We will follow the Pecos River for about 75 miles south
then cut over to the west and pick up the Hondo River and follow it for about
fifty miles then we will head north for the last 20 or so miles along the Rio
Bonito. We should have good water and grazing the whole way. Will
you wire the commander at the fort and see how many head he wants us to
deliver? Depending on what he says we can get what boys we need to get
the job done.
Gathering up some necessary hands…..
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| Wokiyaka Casmu Sunka |
SUNKA SANDOVAL
FORT WORTH, TEXAS
NEED SCOUT FOR MONTH JUNE
AND JULY (STOP) CHARLES GOODNIGHT AND
MYSELF TAKING BEEVES FROM FORT SUMNER TO
FORT STANTON (STOP) WE EXPECT TO HAVE COMANCHE AND RENEGADE PROBLEMS (STOP)
WIRE ME IF YOU CAN JOIN US AT SUMNER MIDDLE OF JUNE (STOP) PUTTING TOGETHER
HANDS RIGHT NOW (STOP)
OLIVER
7:40 AM
This is the next message……………..sent by way
of Wells Fargo Stage Lines
Charles Goodnight
Parker County, Texas
We have about 490 head of
beeves at Fort Sumner that the Quartermaster didn’t pay us for the last time we
delivered. It seems as though we will
continue to supply the Fort with beef since the Navajo have not taken to well
to farming. There are several thousand
Indians, mostly Navajo at the fort and they are growing restless by the
day. Word has it that several of the
young bucks have acquired horses and left the res at Fort Sumner. We can continue to supply the fort with beef
as long as we keep up a good relation with the Quartermaster. What beef they have right now should hold
them until September. If it is ok with
you, maybe we can get a similar unwritten contract with Fort Stanton over in
Lincoln County. What I was thinking was
we could take the 490 head to Fort Sumner to Fort Stanton mid-summer and take
care of their need. I understand that
there are a number of buffalo soldiers at Stanton and will be there for some
time. I am a little concerned about the raiding of some renegades and also the
young bucks from the reservation at Sumner.
The blamed Comanche are a concern too, but not so much the Mescaleros …they
seem to mind their own business . I wish we could get our
hands on some of those Henry's we have been hearing about. I understand you can
put a handfull of cartridges through to Henry in less time than it takes you to
spit. Maybe we will get lucky and will have enough jingle in our pockets
when we get back to Weatherford that we can pick up enough of them that
will allow us to sleep better at night.
Oliver
The telegrams and Stagecoach letter are
about a cattle drive by Loving and Goodnight after they had delivered 2000
beeves to Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1866.
According to the history books in June of 1866 Goodnight and Loving partnered
up to make a cattle drive to western markets.
They were hoping for a big demand from settlers and soldiers on the
western front for their beef. Biggest of
which was for the fort to supply beef to the Navajos who had recently been
placed on a reservation near Fort Sumner.
If all this panned out then the drive would be profitable for them. As it turned out Goodnight
returned to Texas with approximately $12,000 in gold to buy more cattle. Loving went on to the railhead in Denver, Colorado with the remaining cows and calfs that the fort was not
interested in purchasing at 8 cents a
pound. According to our part of the
re-nactment at FORT STANTON LIVE, Loving and Goodnight embarked upon
another venture to Fort Stanton to supply the fort and settlers with some of
the beef that they left on grazing land near Fort Sumner.
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| Larry Pope |
My wife, Linda, and I have been going up to Lincoln County New
Mexico for a few years to the festivities at Lincoln and Fort Stanton and have enjoyed the outing very much. As I have mentioned in the past we are even
writing a book called Forts, Farbs, and
Phantoms about some strange happenings at the fort….but that is, as they
say, another story. This story is about
participating in the festivities you can find online called Fort Stanton Live. There are several companies of soldiers both
Union and Confederate as well as buffalo soldiers and some other soldiers
depicting other wars in the 1800’s. This
particular period is around the 1860’s, so there will be some Civil War
re-enactments as well as representations of life just after the War Between the
States.
A while back it occurred to me that the Fort
Stanton Live July 12, 2014 would indeed be a possibility for setting up my
chuck wagon and doing something completely different from what my friends and I
would ordinarily do at a cook-off or some other setting. This event would have the participants be “in
character” the whole time. Well I
thought that would be very interesting and would require a good bit of research
pertaining to the time period of 1866.
Again, I was thinking….which is sometimes dangerous….that it is entirely
possibly that Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight could easily have been at
Fort Stanton to deliver some beef because they were doing that exact thing at
Fort Sumner, New Mexico. So the research
began looking into what was going on “in the day”. I thought about the telegraph and how it was
used back then because I wanted to send a telegram to my partner, Charles
Goodnight, but realized there must be some etiquette when sending a telegram. They charge by the word and if you were to
write “10th” you would be charged for 3 words. It would be cheaper to write “tenth”. There are some many other tricks to keep the
cost down. I tell you this just to let
you know that researching is sometimes fun and you find out a lot that you
don’t or didn’t know. For another
instance, the Henry repeating rifle was invented in 1860 and there were 900
made between 1860 and 1862. Another
tidbit was that Charles Goodnight could not read or write. He mostly used his wife as the person to
cipher what he needed to communicate.
Charles’ first wife Mary, as Charles called her, and known to everyone
else as Molly, met Charles in 1864 and they were married in 1870 and they had
no children.
In the time sequence of Goodnight and Loving the famous cattle
drive they made blazing the Goodnight-Loving Trail occurred in 1867. And don’t forget that Lonesome Dove, the
Hollywood movie, was also based on this same drive. Our re-enactment
occurred in 1866 and again history has a little hiccup in that Goodnight
invented the chuck wagon by redoing a Studebaker wagon and outfitting it with a
box on the back that the cook would store all of his necessary cooking
items. The glitch in the re-enacting history is that the wagon was a
John Deere and not a Studebaker and since history doesn’t say that the chuck
wagon was used first on the Goodnight-Loving trail we insist that this trip
from Fort Sumner to Fort Stanton was a trial run to see how it worked out and
what things would be necessary to have on the wagon.
We have talked about the food we would fix, but first I
thought that Charles, Oliver, Bill, nor Sunka would have been the coosie for
this re-enactment so something must have happened to the cook. Yes, an unfortunate accident happen after a
storm had occurred on the upward reaches of the Pecos River and it was on a
pretty good rise. Everyone waited
several hours for the water to go down and growing impatient they decided to
cross. The chuck wagon was the first to
cross and the force of the water spooked the team and turned up river and the
current slammed against the side of the wagon throwing Jebediah into the
water. He quickly grabbed hold of a spoke in the front wheel and was pulled under the water, the wheel
stopping on his arm. There were out riders with ropes tied onto the wagon but
they couldn’t let loose of the ropes or the wagon would have gone over on top
of Jebediah. Before any of the other men
could free him, he had drowned. It was a
tragic accident but that is the reason we are doing our own cooking.
Now for cooking and what we might have to eat while at the
fort. Possibilities are: beans, bacon,
venison, redeye gravy, Johnny cakes, eggs (chickens at the fort), tomatoes, and
smoked meat.
Charles’ chuck wagon would
not have had all of the stuff that is on my wagon so I began to eliminate all
unnecessary items like: “table legs” for the serving tables, most of
the fly poles, chairs, water hose, pan liners, trays used for staging chicken
fried steaks, breast collar on water barrel, unnecessary pots, pans, and coffee
pots, and propane lanterns. I did a
quick inventory of the hot and cold blast lanterns and did some maintenance on
them to get them burning somewhat efficiently.
Nearly all of the Dutch ovens were eliminated.
The water barrel, according
to Wikipedia, “was attached to the wagon”
so mine will be held onto the side of the wagon but first needed a good soaking
since it would probably be the only water we will have to use while at the
fort.
I knew we would need to
refrigerate some things like the venison, eggs, and a few other things so I
needed to build something that would hide an ice chest. Off to Academy where I purchased a medium
sized cooler and took it home for measurements.
Soon the wooden box was built which now resembles a tomato box. I had recently redone an Arbuckle’s box so it
will be used to “hide” a few other items.
Since we may be giving away some food items I thought we would need a
place to store some paper plates etc.
Now let’s see, we will need
enough cooking iron to feed about 12-14 cowboys so I added a 16”, 14” and a 12”
Dutch oven, one bean pot, one coffee pot, two small frying pans and an enamel
kettle.
The sleeping arrangements
will be cowboy tipis with cowboy bedrolls so I needed to remake my bedroll so
that it would function as one and not just a prop. Sharpening the axe will come in handy when
the wood needs splitting. We will be
using the chuck wagon coffee grinder so we will need to restock the coffee
beans. I still have to go through the
chuck box itself and remove all of the non- period spices and aluminum
untensils, coffee mate, sweet and low, etc.
Now it is beginning to look like a real trail wagon. I just wonder what all went through the mind
of Goodnight and his cook as to what should be taken on the wagon. We still sit around the fire and debate this
topic. Basically every wagon that went
up the trail was constructed differently and contained the things that were
important to that particular trail crew.
