A Man of the Old West
His name was Charles Goodnight, and he was a man of the open spaces, a man who looked forward, and a great American.
Charles Goodnight, often known as Charlie Goodnight, was a great American cowboy, rancher, explorer, and entrepreneur. He raised cattle, he uncovered new trails for the famous cattle drives of the late 1800s, and he made it his personal mission to protect the remnants of the old great southern bison herd. He was one of the people who made America great.
This is his story.
His Origins
Charles Goodnight was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, in 1836. He was the fourth child of the senior Charles Goodnight and his wife Charlotte Goodnight, nee Collier. Charles’ father died sometime when Charles was still young; in 1846, he moved to Texas with his mother and her new husband, one Hiram Doughtery.
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Not much is known about Charles Goodnight’s childhood or his younger years. We can presume his early life in Texas after the move was broadly similar to that of any 10-year-old boy in Texas in the pre-Civil War era. Texas wasn’t long a state, and vast sweeps of the country were uninhabited except by a few wandering cattle. West Texas, in particular, was a hard land that produced hard people. That’s what Charles Goodnight grew to be, but there was a lot more to him than just being hard; he was also fair and honest.
Those are qualities in distinctly short supply today.
His Career
When Charles Goodnight reached 20, he was working as a cowboy and doing double duty in the local militia, mostly fighting off Comanche raiders. In 1857, he joined the Texas Rangers, doing duty again as a scout. When the Civil War broke out, Charlie served as a scout there, too, but not in any major battle; he spent the war with the Texas State Troops Frontier Regiment, again holding the western flank against the Comanche. Here, his brief time in the Texas Rangers served him in good stead, as he worked as a scout again. He became an excellent horseman, tough and fast.
It was after the war that his real career – cowboy and cattleman – began.
With the war behind him, Charles and his partner, Oliver Loving, realized that there were a lot of cattle in Texas that needed moving north to Colorado and Wyoming, so they began to work to do just that, because why not? They formed some of the first great western cattle drives, and in so doing, founded the famous Goodnight-Loving Trail. This trail started at Fort Belknap, Texas, and ended in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. In 1867, Oliver Loving was killed during a fight with the Comanche, but Charles followed Loving’s last request, carrying his body back to Texas for burial. Then Charles continued the work.
After seeing Oliver Loving buried, and after marrying Mary Ann Dyer in 1870, Charles partnered up with another famous man of the old West, John Chisum, and extended the old Goodnight-Loving Trail to Colorado and later to Wyoming. He let nothing stand in the way of his herds: Not weather, not Indians, not bandits or rustlers. If Charles Goodnight took on a trail drive, those cattle got through.
In an interesting side note, Charles Goodnight is also generally credited with inventing the chuck wagon, when he rebuilt an old Army wagon to haul food, cooking equipment, and a cook, following which the cowboys on his drives ate a lot better.
In 1876, Charles took a notion to settle down, so he founded the JA Ranch in Palo Duro Canyon. The ranch grew to almost a million acres, making it one of the largest independently owned cattle ranches in American history. By 1878, cattle were moving north from the JA Ranch on what became known as the Palo Duro-Dodge City Trail. Along the way, Charles made a deal with the natives in the Indian Territory to give them two cattle every other day, in return for the Indians leaving his herd alone. The deal, made with Quanah Parker, was sealed by a private treaty between the two men – and it held.
The treaty with the Comanche was prompted by the near-destruction of the great southern bison herd, as a result of which some Indians were starving. Charles took it on himself to do something about it, and in 1876, he brought in and protected a remnant of that herd. The descendants of those animals survive even now, in Caprock Canyons State Park. The bison herd in Yellowstone was also augmented by animals from Charles’s herd.
His career wasn’t always carried out in a gentlemanly fashion. Around 1880, the area where the JA Ranch was operating had problems with cattle thieves. Charles started the Panhandle Stockman’s Association to deal with the problem, following which some cattle rustlers found themselves dancing on the end of a rope. There is an apocryphal story wherein Charles’ wife remonstrated with him over the hangings, referring to a couple of notorious rustlers left hanging from a telegraph pole. Charles shrugged, according to the story, and remarked that it hadn’t hurt the poles any.
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As the open range era ended, Charles adapted. He pulled in. He became one of the first Texas ranchers to use barbed wire to contain his herd.
In 1919, a bad investment in a silver mine forced Charles to sell the ranch. He did so, conveying the property to an oilman, W.J. McAlister, who generously allowed Charles and Mary Ann to stay on the property. Mary Ann died in 1926, after which Charles moved to Clarendon, Texas, dying in 1929. I find it amazing that my father was six years old, a little boy in eastern Iowa, when this scion of the Old West died.
Thus ended the career of one of the Old West’s great men: Trailblazer, explorer, cattleman, conservationist.
His Legacy
Charles Goodnight was known as a hardworking, forthright, and honest man. J. Frank Dobie, who knew him personally, later wrote about Charles:
I have met a lot of good men, several fine gentlemen, hordes of cunning climbers, plenty of loud-braying asses, and plenty of dumb oxen, but I haven't lived long enough or traveled far enough to meet more than two or three men I'd call great. This is a word I will not bandy around. To me, Charles Goodnight was great-natured.
We could use a few more like him today.
