By Matt Doherty
As legend goes, George McJunkin was born into slavery in Rogers Prairie on his master's John Sanders McJunkin's Texas ranch ten years before the start of the Civil War. George's father, who had purchased his freedom years before, was a blacksmith and raised a few mules for the freighters hauling buffalo hide east from the Indian country.
During the war while all the white cowboys were away fighting, George learned to ride from the Mexican vaqueros that stayed behind. After the war ended, there was an abundance of cattle roaming Texas. The cattle had multiplied to nearly five million head in the absence of men, who were away fighting. Cowboys would gather the cattle and drive them north to the railheads to be shipped to big cities in the east where they were to be slaughtered for meat.
At night, George would sneak off to the river to listen to stories around the fire from the cowboys driving Longhorns north to Abilene, Kansas. George dreamed of the freedom of being a cowboy and was amazed by the equality the black, white, and Mexican cowboys shared.
One night in the spring of 1867, George gathered up two ropes, an extra pair of wool pants, and stuffed a couple of pieces of cornbread into a gunny sack and headed barefooted down the dirt road. George stopped at the first house after sunup and told them to inform his parents of his whereabouts, "Tell them I'm going to be a cowboy and to look for school."
As he made his way further down the road, he passed a group of horses and one old mule that had strayed from the McJunkin ranch. Rather than walking, George decided he would borrow a horse since master McJunkin did owe him for all the free labor.
Using his better judgment he knew that he would be less likely to attract attention if he was riding a mule. He fashioned a halter out of his rope and rode on down the road. Along the way, he stopped and helped dig a well for a couple of white settlers who were building a sod house. The man paid him a fistful of quarters and with that he purchased his first pair of boots when he arrived in Comanche.
When he reached the camp of cowboys ready to head north, the boss asked if he came through Comanche? George said he had. "You're hired, you got guts kid and I need a horse wrangler with guts. They hung a black kid your age in town two days ago."
Along the trail to Abilene, George learned how to handle horses during the day. At night, the cowboys taught him to read the night sky. Once they reached Abilene, George bought some new clothes and his first horse. However, instead of heading north with the other black cowboys he decided to take up his boss's offer to cowboy for him for the next year. George headed back south to Texas for the winter.
As he was skirting around Comanche, George saw a familiar old mule that he caught and returned to the McJunkin ranch. Upon arriving home, George was offered a job by Gideon Roberts after he watched George make an outstanding bronc ride on a big gray mare.
Roberts and three other men were driving 700 horses across the Comanche-controlled staked and plains of West Texas to New Mexico to sell on the Santa Fe Trail.
Once they reached Palo Duro Canyon in West Texas, they built a cabin and started rounding up more horses for the herd.
One day while George was all alone in the canyon, he heard the sound of thundering hooves. It was a group of Comanche Indians stealing all of the horses. In the frenzy, George's saddle horse broke loose and joined the stampeding mustangs. The Indians rode up to George realizing he was unarmed. One laughed at him and said, "Black Mexican can walk now."
They held their rifles over their heads, spun the ponies around and rode off after the newly acquired herd. When Roberts and the other men returned, they started the long task of reassembling the herd. They only saw one more Indian that winter.
Roberts shot and had George bury the Indian so others would not seek reprisal. It seems the indians got their revenge, though, as the group found the lifeless body of Gideon's brother who had not returned from a turkey hunt. He had been bludgeoned to death with a tomahawk.
Once the herd reached the original numbers before the Indian raid, they headed out for New Mexico. Upon arriving in the Hi Lo country of northeastern New Mexico, George fell in love with the Dry Cimarron Valley or the Seco Cimarron as the Mexican sheepherders called it.
George climbed up the slopes of Capulin Mountain, an extinct volcano that jetted out of the landscape like an enormous ant hill giving a commanding New of the valley. The breathtaking view of the green meadows full of wild Iris nestling the juniper-blanketed mesa reminded him of the promised land in the Bible.
The only inhabitants of the valley were the Spanish sheepherders, two of them, Carlitos Cornay and Candido Archuleta became two of George's closest friends. Cornay and Archuleta came to the area with the Dutch outfit and the first Cattlemen in that part of New Mexico.
George spent his days exploring the river and following the horses as they grazed on the open range. There were a few travelers along the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail. Most stayed on the main route, and there were few others in need of horses in the area. Following Charles Goodnight and the thousands of longhorns, Roberts had George drive the horses over Trinchera pass into Colorado where they set up the first horse ranch a few miles east of Trinidad.
The ranch was located on the Purgatory River near the Mountain Branch of the Santa
Fe Trail.
Robert sold the horses as fast as George could break them and it wasn't long before a Robert's Horse trained by George was a highly sought after commodity. Trinidad at this time was a rough, lawless town employing Bat Masterson for a time as sheriff. Billy the Kid rode into town looking to kill four doctors, but was talked out of it by a Catholic nun. George would only stay in town long enough to get supplies and quickly headed back to the ranch.
On one of his supply runs he bought a fiddle. George played the fiddle at the old Trinchera Plaza at night for his friends when he wasn't taking reading and writing lessons from Gideon Roberts' sons, Emmett and Coke. He would teach the boys how to break horses in exchange for his lessons.
George was asked to help with the round up at the "101" near No Man's Land, where Oklahoma joined New Mexico territory down the Dry Cimarron River. After the round up was over, Ben Smith, foreman of the 101 asked George if he would like a job working for Dr. Thomas Owen.
Owen had been the first mayor of Trinidad and partner of the 101. The doctor was starting a new place, Hereford Park. George didn't hesitate knowing the doctor raised some of the best horses in that part of the west and it was located at the headwaters of the Dry Cimarron, George's beloved promised land.
George soon found himself with the doctor and his brother
John burying the three sacks of gold from the sale of the cattle George trailed up from Texas to Hereford Park. The three men were worried that the Coe Gang, who operated out of No Man's Land had heard of the sale and would surely be looking for the gold.
George would watch it until the following spring when they returned to purchase more cattle. George's responsibilities grew as Dr. Owen spent more time away from Hereford Park.
He oversaw the crew of men that built the big house and barn and would teach the Doctor's sons, Tom and Ben, the art of bronc riding. He rewarded them with a new pair of spurs just as he did for the Roberts boys and the many others that he taught to ride over the years.
One night after dinner, Dr. Owen told George that this will be the last roundup before they fenced in the open range and he was to be the wagon boss. He was reluctant for he would be in charge of 20 cowboys, 2000 head of cattle and 200 head of horses, but Dr. Owen reassured him he was the best cowboy in New Mexico and there wasn't another man better suited for the job.
It didn't take long to earn the respect of the other Texas cowboys that resented working for a black man. In the fall of 1889, George and 14 cowboys from the "Cross L," "Pitchfork," and the "101" were caught in a 10-day blizzard on the roundup outside of Clayton. The storm was so severe it wiped out most of the 1200 head of steers and the Pitchfork's entire 200 head Remuda. If it wasn't for George taking control on the third day and leading them to the Bramlett ranch, the cowboys would've met the same fate.
Two years after the blizzard, Dr. Owen asked George to hitch up the buggy and take him into Folsom to meet the train. The doctor was old and sick now and this would be their last ride together. George helped him on the train and the doctor said, "Thank you, thank you. I know you'll take good care of things." And with that, the train pulled out and his friend and teacher was dead before it arrived in Trinidad.
George would now have a big responsibility as the father figure for Tom and Ben who were too young to run the ranch alone. George caught the eye of their new neighbor Bill Jack, an important New Mexico cattleman who owns the XYZ, a mile north of Hereford Park. It was here on the Crowfoot Ranch that George got his next opportunity.
Mr. Jack sent George on the train to Silver City to round up his herd and bring them back to the Crowfoot. George was riding into Silver City when he came across four men beating a man. He pulled out his rifle and said, "It's an awful hot day to be doing that kind of work isn't?" Startled, the men spun around, but George's horse spooked leaving George on the ground.
The bandits escaped during the commotion, but the man George just saved was a lieutenant in the Cavalry stationed at Fort Bayard. The men that accosted the lieutenant were after the payroll and the lieutenant was so thankful that he gave George his telescope. He would use it and the transit he got from his friend, the owner of the TO, to fence the open range. This would not be his only encounter with outlaws.
George was riding back to the Crowfoot from Folsom when he came upon a camp of strange men. After visiting with them, George grew suspicious. The next day his suspicion was right. A train was robbed between Folsom and Des Moines and the gang made off with a large sum of gold and silver. McJunkin took Sheriff George Titsworth to the spot where he had seen the men camping. Together, he and Tittsworth found a note shredded into pieces.
Titsworth took the paper back to the store in Folsom where they pieced it together.
From the information on this letter, Tittsworth concluded that they were headed for Cimmaron. He loaded the posse on the train and cut the outlaws off in Turkey Canyon near Cimarron. A shoot out commenced that left sheriff Ed Farr dead but two of the outlaws, Sam Ketchum and Elza Lay were both shot. Ketchum would later die in the New Mexico State penitentiary and Elza Lay would later be apprehended. This marked the beginning of the end of the outlaw era for the Wild Bunch and Ketchum gang whose members often rode with each other.
George's greatest achievement would come after the greatest catastrophe the Dry Cimarron Valley had ever seen. On August 27 in 1908, a thunderstorm dropped 14 inches of rain on Johnson Mesa just above the Crowfoot. The flood decimated the town of Folsom and eroded the alley.
After the flood, George surveyed the damage. While ding up Wildhorse Arroyo he noticed bones protruding from the bank nearly 11 feet below the surface. He knew that the bones were too big to be modern buffalo and must be bones of an extinct species. He removed a few bones and skull and showed it to anyone that would listen for the next 14 years.
Unfortunately due to the remoteness of the "bone pit," George couldn't convince anyone of any importance into going to the site before he passed away in the Folsom Hotel in January 1922. Luckily he had taken some of the bones to his friend Carl Shwahiem, the blacksmith in Raton.
Shwahiem shared George's interest and decided to take the bones to the Denver Museum of Natural History while he was on a business trip. The museum determined that the bones were that of an extinct ice age bison that had recently been discovered and wanted one for display at the museum.
Carl took them to George's Bone Pit and excavation began in 1926, four years after McJunkin's death. During the dig, an unexpected discovery was uncovered. A stone projectile point was found lodged in the ribs of the extinct bison. George's discovery turned out to be the greatest archaeological find of the 21st Century, proving that man had inhabited the North American continent thousands of years before scholars thought.
"It's a discovery that made him famous, but his courage, determination and perseverance is what is remembered about the man. A true cowboy!" So nearly 100 years after his death, George McJunkin took his place beside his fellow legends at the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City on April 12, 2019.
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