Find
businesses offering goods & services to the traveling public
Visit
our video library featuring scenes from "The Land of Enchantment"
John Simpson Chisum
All John Simpson Chisum wanted to do was raise cattle. Although he had driven herds from Texas to Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico, and negotiated fair prices from buyers, Chisum was happiest as a cattle rancher. He was born to raise livestock, expand the herd, and improve the breed.
Although he was listed as President of the Lincoln County Bank, Chisum also wasn't a banker. His universe was his vast herd of longhorns, grazing a 150-mile stretch of public domain grasslands in the Pecos River Valley in southeast New Mexico. The center of his universe was his ranch, first in the Bosque Grande, between Old Ft. Sumner and Roswell, then at South Spring, five miles southeast of present-day Roswell.
Chisum was born on August 16, 1824, near Cloverport, Tennessee, the second of five children, and the eldest of four brothers. On his grandfather's plantation, he displayed a boyhood interest in cattle that earned him the nickname "Cow John". Two years after his grandfather's death, the Chisums moved to Paris, Texas, in September, 1837, where his father began acquired land and livestock. He worked at several uninspiring jobs. While serving a two-year term as Lamar County Clerk (1852-54), Chisum began learning about the best places to ranch in nearby counties. He cut his teeth in the local cattle business by buying livestock from farmers and selling them to butchers.
In the Spring of 1854, Chisum met Stephen K. Fowler, a New York investor who was interested in a cattle ranching partnership in Texas. They signed a 10-year profit-sharing contract. Fowler gave Chisum $10,000 to buy cattle. By year's end, he bought 1,200 head of stock and sent them onto scrub rangeland north of present-day Ft. Worth. In February, 1855, he drove them again, to better grass and more water. The Fowler-Chisum partnership prospered as the herd grew.
In November, 1863, Chisum drove 1,500 head of longhorns far to the southwest, to where the Concho and Colorado Rivers merge near present-day San Angelo. By then, Chisum had already originated the distinctive brand and mark for his livestock, the Long Rail and the Jinglebob, respectively. This let Chisum recognize his livestock from a distance, and made it tough for rustlers to sell his stock.
After the Civil War, Chisum watched as new beef markets opened up in New Mexico and Arizona. Free of his partnership, Chisum, his younger brother, Pitzer, and several cowhands drove 600 head of cattle west into southeast New Mexico in August, 1867. Guiding the herd north up the Pecos River Valley, they came to the Bosque Grande, a cow camp 25 miles north of present-day Roswell.
After selling his herd at Ft. Sumner 43 miles upstream, Chisum and his outfit wintered at the Bosque Grande. Before leaving there the next Spring for more longhorns, Chisum learned of the imminent closure of Ft. Sumner. He quickly shook hands on a partnership with Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight, who'd sold his first two herds of longhorns to Ft. Sumner before Chisum's arrival. Over the next three years, Chisum drove Texas longhorns west to the Bosque Grande, where Goodnight took them north to Colorado and Kansas.
Both men prospered. The partnership ended amicably in the Fall of 1871, when Chisum decided to build a ranch at the Bosque Grande, just like land baron Lucien Maxwell had done in the Spring of 1871, when Maxwell, his family and his Cimarron entourage moved to Ft. Sumner.
By 1872, Chisum's longhorns, grazing on public domain grasses from the Bosque Grande south to present-day Carlsbad, had grown to 20,000 head. In December, 1874, Chisum traded 2,400 head of cattle for a 40-acre ranch on the South Spring River, five miles southeast of Roswell. He named his place the Jinglebob Ranch.
By the summer of 1875, Chisum, the acknowledged "Cattle King of the Pecos", watched his herd increase to 80,000 longhorns. That year alone, he sent 10,000 cattle west into Arizona, and another 20,000 north into Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. Chisum was at the pinnacle of prosperity.
He was a personable, patient, and persuasive businessman. When persuasion failed, he'd sometimes fall back on sarcasm. Chisum was cool under stress, too. He never carried a gun. He enjoyed jokes, telling as well as hearing them, and his laugh would boom. At a campfire on the range or working in the corral, Chisum, casual in manner and dress, was in his element. His eye seemed to read a longhorn's age and health. If he detected bad behavior in an animal, he'd have it cut out of the herd. Cow John was a cattleman's cattle man.
Chisum was a devoted family man, too. His younger brothers, Pitzer and James, knew he was the unquestioned head of the household at South Spring. Like Chisum, Pitzer was single. But when James and his family arrived to help at South Spring in December, 1877, Chisum became Uncle John to James's sons, Will and Walter, and daughter, Sally. If he was away on trips, he'd always write letters home. He and Pitzer were fiddle players at family gatherings. Chisum loved roses, and developed an interest in agriculture. He was a hospitable host, never charging a guest for room and board. He often welcomed new families with the gift of a milk cow.
By 1875, homesteaders and other ranchers began settling in the Pecos River Valley and range land was becoming increasingly restrictive. Chisum's countermove was to groom a small, select herd for top-quality beef. In December, 1875, he downsized, selling most of his cattle to Hunter, Evans & Co., a beef commodity firm in St. Louis, for $219,000. Half the money was up front; the rest the firm paid him each time it moved cattle to market over several years. Chisum continued to manage the herd for them as they grazed in the Pecos Valley. To ensure that he tended the herd, Chisum handed over title to his entire holdings to the firm until Col. R. D. Hunter's 40,000 cattle were sold.
By the late Fall of 1876, Chisum's cattle operations began to suffer significant livestock losses as rustlers gathered at Seven Rivers, 52 miles below South Spring. Many of the men worked for Lincoln merchants Lawrence G. Murphy and James J. Dolan.
Chisum complained loudly, first to Dolan, then to his senior partner, Murphy, the founder of Lincoln's powerful L. G. Murphy & Co., and then to rancher and land speculator Thomas B. Catron, the state Attorney General. Catron also was President of the First National Bank of Santa Fe, which held mortgages on Murphy's and Dolan's assets.
Adept at forging fruitful partnerships his entire life, Chisum joined forces with the L. G. Murphy & Co.'s rivals, Lincoln merchant John H. Tunstall and lawyer Alexander A. McSween. Tunstall and McSween's bank would keep any cash generated in Lincoln instead of being deposited in Santa Fe.
Catron fought back and had Chisum jailed in Las Vegas in December, 1877, filed an injunction in Jan. (1878), and a court appearance in Santa Fe in Feb. Chisum's attorney filed a challenge that stalled the case, Chisum posted $25,000 bond in March, and was released. By then, the Lincoln County War was underway and Chisum's ranch became a rendezvous and sanctuary for the McSweens and the Regulators (among whom was Billy the Kid). When William Morton, one of the men suspected of shooting and killing Tunstall, and Frank Baker, a member of Morton's posse, spent three nights under guard there in March, the Kid and Chisum's nephew, Will, after chores on that first evening, fished in the South Spring River. The Kid had met Chisum there sometime the previous Fall, before finding work at Tunstall's ranch. The Kid was also drawn to Chisum's niece. Sometimes Billy and Sally sat on the porch at night, talking. Other times they'd go off riding horses together. Once in awhile, he'd bring her a gift.
Freed after nine weeks in jail, Chisum returned in late March to South Spring, where he found McSween's wife, Susan; her husband, Chisum's long time attorney, was in hiding. He accompanied the McSweens back to Lincoln. They arrived there April 1, shortly after Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady and deputy George Hindeman had been shot and killed. They rode past the bodies, which were still lying in the street. Chisum's presence at District Court (he stayed the entire Spring session) helped win McSween's acquittal.
Soon after returning to South Spring, Chisum learned that James had been chased on horseback by a Seven Rivers posse for 12 miles on April 29, before his brother outdistanced them. Soon after that, Chisum found out that Pitzer had ridden away at night from a friend's home after learning that another Seven Rivers posse intended to disfigure him.
On June 20, the McSween forces again fled Lincoln for South Spring. A Seven Rivers posse rode out to the ranch, where the McSween faction (including the Kid) was forted up. No shot were fired, and the next morning, July 5, the posse was gone. When the posse returned, James advised them the McSweens were gone, and only women and children were there. The posse rode away.
The Chisums realized the Lincoln County War had come to South Spring. Rattled, they talked of leaving the Jinglebob Ranch. Earlier that Spring, Hunter, Evans & Co. had already begun removing their herd from harm's way. When word reached the Chisums on July 20 of McSween's death, they began packing.
While Pitzer and a skeleton crew stayed behind, James and his family, their possessions in wagons, headed north on July 31. Behind them, Chisum's outfit drove several thousand of the Jinglebob's finest cattle. They crossed into Texas on September 28. There on Trujillo Creek, 30 miles west of Tascosa, the Chisums built makeshift quarters and corrals to wait out the winter and beyond.
The Chisums were gone 14 months, but returned to South Spring in November, 1879. Since his firm's cattle had been safely removed to Texas, Hunter & Evans & Co. returned title of the ranch to Pitzer and James, since Chisum had become the target of lawsuits.
But the return of the Jinglebob stock prompted a resurgance in rustling the Chisum herd. The Kid, who'd confronted Chisum one day and demanded back pay for fighting in the Lincoln County War and was refused (Chisum calmly replying, "You know just as well as I do that I never hired you to do anything for me."), decided to recoup what he thought he was owed by stealing Jinglebob cattle and driving them to Tascosa.
Once the Kid was captured in December, 1880, a relieved Chisum got busy at South Spring. The Jinglebob herd began to increase, and soon numbered 15,000 head. By the Fall of 1881, Chisum moved into a new home. Costing $12,000, it was bigger and better than his earlier place. Nearby were two utility buildings, a large barn, horse corrals, and a fenced pasture. By then, Chisum's rangeland was reduced to a 60-mile stretch from Salt Creek (in today's Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge) south to present-day Artesia.
In the Spring of 1883, as the Jinglebob herd increased to 30,000 head, Chisum discovered a tumor in his neck. Repeated surgeries failed to check its growth, and his health declined. He gradually turned things over to James, and bookkeeper nephew, William Robert. Pitzer cashed out in February, 1884, and returned to Paris, Texas.
In August, 1884, Chisum underwent major surgery in Kansas City, Mo. Suffering from post-operative complications and still weak from surgery, Chisum decided to recuperate in Eureka Springs, Ark. There he suffered a relapse and died on December 22, 1884. He was buried in the Chisum family plot in Paris, Texas.
James and his family lost the ranch to foreclosure in 1891. Subsequently, South Spring became the home of noted American industrialist J. J. Hagerman (1838-1909), who bought it in 1892, and decades later, famed American oilman Robert O. Anderson (1917-2007).
Chisum Vignette
Did John Chisum once propose to Alexander McSween's widow? One story that went around back then was that he did. Asked about it years later, his niece, Sally Chisum Robert, replied that there might have been something to that story.
In 1879, Sally remembered, Chisum decided to repay McSween's widow for the work her late husband had done for him as his attorney. She recalled watching her uncle assemble 200 of his best heifer yearlings. "There wasn't an off-color or scrub in the bunch, " Sally recounted. "He started them to Lincoln, which was five days' travel away. About the time the cattle were supposed to arrive, Uncle John dolled up in his best clothes, his shop-made boots, his calf-skin and Stetson hat, and lit out for Lincoln."
"I was informed that Uncle John had delivered the herd at the mouth of the Ruidoso," she continued, "and was riding along with Mrs. McSween, giving her the benefit of his knowledge of raising cattle, (when) she asked for permission to use the Jinglebob earmark. Well, he mused and was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, not unless you will give me the promise that some time in the near future we might merge the herds and you become the queen of the Jinglebobs."
Before she could answer, a Jinglebob puncher galloped up and told Chisum he was on the trail of stolen stock, leading toward the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. He turned his horse and started in pursuit without saying goodbye.
"To my knowledge," Sally said, "he and Mrs. McSween never met again."
Sources:
Burroughs, Jean M., "John Chisum's Last Christmas," New Mexico Magazine (Santa Fe: New Mexico Commerce & Industry Dept., Dec., 1982).
Hinton, Jr., Harwood P., "John Chisum, 1877-84," New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 3; Vol. 31, No. 4 & Vol. 32, No. 1 (Albuquerque: Univ ersity of New Mexico Press, July, 1956-Jan., 1957).
Keleher, William A., Violence In Lincoln County, 1869-1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957).
Nolan, Frederick, The Lincoln County War, A Documentary History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
Nolan, Frederick, The West of Billy The Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
Potter, Col. Jack, "The Jingle-Bob Herd," New Mexico Magazine (Santa Fe: New Mexico Highway Dept., July, 1945).
Wallis, George, "Cattle Kings," New Mexico Magazine (Santa Fe: New Mexico Dept. of Development, June, 1936).
Wilson, John P., Merchants, Guns & Money: The Story of Lincoln County & Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987).
