March 16, 2023 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the cattle kings of the Old West carved empires out of the wilderness. They were larger than life characters—bold, daring, intelligent, courageous, tough. They had great strength of character and iron wills. No cattle king exhibited these characteristics more than Richard King. Roger McGrath brings us the story along with William Yancey from Texas A&M University, Kingsville.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here on our American Stories. And our
next story is about an American legend named Richard King.
King's legacy can be seen on every tailgate and door
of Ford's upscale F series trucks. The logo reads King Ranch.
Here to tell the story of Richard King is Roger McGrath,
author of Gunfighters, Hiuman and Vigilantes, a former US Marine
(00:34):
and former history professor at UCLA. Doctor McGrath has appeared
on numerous History Channel documentaries and is a regular contributor
to Our American Stories. Here's Roger McGrath. The cattle Kings
of the Old West carved empires out of the wilderness.
They were larger than life characters, bold, dear and intelligent, courageous, tough,
(00:59):
They had great strength character in iron wills. No cattle
king exhibited these characteristics more than Richard King. Born in
New York City to Irish immigrant parents in eighteen twenty four,
Richard King is only three years old when his parents
die and he is left in the care of an aunt.
(01:20):
At nine years old, he is apprentice to a jeweler.
The jeweler works him hard six days a week. On
his day off, the young boy walks down to the
docks of Manhattan and watches the ships come and go.
He dreams of climbing aboard a ship and sailing off.
At twelve years old, he does just that. Here's William Yancy,
(01:44):
historian at Texas A and M University, Kingsville. He ran
away to the docks in New York City and he
snuck on board an ocean going ship called the Desdemona,
and he hit out in the hold of that ship
for about two weeks to scrounge and whatever food he
could get his hands on. After two weeks, some sailors
found him in the hold of that ship, and at
(02:04):
this point the ship was already well out to sea,
so they grabbed him brought him up to the captain.
The captain asked him the question, what is your name, boy,
and he immediately answered, my name is Richard King, and
you can either throw me overboard or put me to work,
but I'm not going back. Captain seemed to be impressed
by this young man's attitude, so he put him to work.
(02:26):
For the next several years. King works in a variety
of capacities on several different ships. He demonstrates such intelligence, talent,
and leadership. The two different ship captains school him in
navigation and command of a ship. By the time he
is sixteen, is a pilot's license and knows the Gulf
(02:47):
coast and the rivers of the Cotton Kingdom like the
back of his hand. In eighteen forty two, King lists
for service in the Seminole War in Florida. It is
during his Seminal War service that he meets Mifflin Kennedy,
another ship's officer. King and Kennedy will become lifelong friends.
(03:11):
Kennedy had been born in Pennsylvania, and like King, had
first gone to see as a cabin boy and worked
his way up to become a ship's pilot. Nineteen forty three,
Richard King has grown and matured. The nineteen year old
is square jawed, well muscled, and tall for the times
at five feet eleven inches. When provoked, he could turn
(03:32):
the air of purple with profanity. That makes his friendship
with a soft spoken Quaker Nifflin Kennedy something of a surprise.
In eighteen forty seven, Richard King enlists first Second War,
taking command of the ship Colonel Cross, and rises drank
of captain in the US Navy. During the Mexican War.
(03:56):
King serves for the war's duration, transporting troops and supplies.
He becomes intimately familiar with the Texas and Mexican coasts
and with the Rio Grande River. It is during his
service in the Mexican War the King recognizes steamship service
would revolutionize the commerce of South Texas, especially the Rio
(04:19):
grand Valley. When the war ends, he buys this ship.
He commands as war surplus and is often steaming. King
soon forms a partnership with his old friend Mifflin Kennedy.
By the mid eighteen fifties, their company is operating more
than two dozen ships, and thanks in part to their
(04:40):
low rates, they're monopolizing shipping on the Rio Grande River.
They will continue in this pre eminent position for more
than two decades. Here again, as William Yancy in eighteen fifty,
Captain King had been on a steamboat run to Rio
grand City and back. He had had a rough couple
of days. He had had problems his sailors. He had
(05:01):
had problems with the engines on his steamboats. The final
straw was when he got back to Brownsville. He went
to more steamboat and the slip where he normally kept it,
and somebody had already had a boat there. Today there
was a steamboat in this slip. Now, everybody in Brown's
on you not to park their steamboats there, because that
was Richard King's slip. But today there's a steamboat there. Well,
(05:23):
this sent him over the edge. He starts cursing a
blue streak. Had to go down the river a little
ways found an empty slip to More's boat, and he
starts walking back towards this houseboat, and he's about to
give the occupant of this house boat a piece of
his mind. Well he never got a chance to do that.
There was a young lady on the houseboat who had
heard him, and she decided to confront him first, and
(05:47):
the two walk towards each other, and this young lady says, essentially,
who do you think you are using language like that?
This is my father's houseboat. He has just as much
right to be here as you do. Why don't you
spend less time making a fool of yourself and more
time washing your filthy boat? And at that Richard King
didn't really have a response. He's not someone who was
(06:07):
left speechless very often, but this time he was left
speechless he turned around and he walked back to his boat,
and then he and his sailor spent the rest of
the afternoon washing that boat. Over the next several days,
he couldn't get this young lady out of his mind.
So he's going to go to his best friend and
business partner, Mifflin Kennedy. So he goes to Kennedy and
(06:29):
ask him who's the young lady whose father's house boats
parked in my slip? And Kennedy says, well, that's miss
Henrietta Chamberlain. Her father's the new Presbyterian minister in town.
Kennedy said, there's only one way you're gonna get to
meet her, and that's if you start going to church
with her. Well, over the next several weeks and months,
he becomes a very faithful Presbyterian, is there every time
(06:53):
the doors of the church are open. And to make
a long story short, he'll begin a four year courtship
of Miss Henrietta. But eventually the two of them will
be married. In eighteen fifty four there in Brownsville, her
father performed the ceremony. The ceremony was at their church.
King takes risks when those with fainter hearts shy away.
(07:13):
He steams sections of the real Grant where others think
it impossible to go. He designs ships specifically for the
fast currents and narrow bends of the river, enabling him
to reach destinations previously considered impossibly remote. While dominating trade
(07:34):
on the real Grant, King recognizes that much of the
land of south western Texas would not support farming, but
would be good for cattle. As a result, he begins
to buy property, including the fifty three thousand acre Santa
Gertrudis Grant. He pays eighteen hundred dollars for the grant,
(07:55):
fought by many to be near or worthless because recurrent
droughts leave much of the area waste land. In eighteen
fifty four, Captain Richard King is going to find some
help for his cattle operation from an unlikely source. During
the eighteen fifties, he made several trips to Mexico to
buy cattle to stock his ranch with now one particular occasion,
(08:18):
he went to a village called Kruis, which was in
the state of Tamilpas, maybe one hundred miles southwest of
Manta Morris. This village, at the time was well known
for its cattle herds and for its vocarros or cowboys.
But they were in the middle of a three year drought.
All the grass was dead, there wasn't any water, the
cattle were dne So Richard King goes there and he
(08:40):
makes a pitch to the villagers because they owned the
herd in common, and he basically said to them, why
don't you sell me your entire herd? And the villagers said,
here's what we're willing to do. We're willing to sell
you the entire herd if you'll take as many of
us as want to go back to your ranch and
we'll work that herd for you. Well, that's a no brainer,
(09:01):
isn't it. He needs help, They need cattle to work.
So about one hundred villagers are going to come back
to the ranch in Texas with Captain King. At that
point they become the first vocaro's or cowboys on the ranch,
and over time they take a lot of pride in
working for Captain King. They start to call themselves kenanios,
which roughly translated means King's men or King's people. Whenever again,
(09:26):
King buys more land. His philosophy is simple, buy land
and never sell and when we come back, we continue
the story of Richard King here on our American stories,
(10:09):
and we returned to our American stories and the remarkable
story of cattle King Richard King. Let's continue when we
last left off. During the Civil War, Texas sees from
the Union joins the Confederacy. Within months, the US Navy
effectively blockades the Gulf Coast, cutting off the South's greatest
(10:31):
source of income, cotton exports. In these dire circumstances, King
becomes one of the Confederacy's heroes, a blockade runner. He
is so successful that he becomes a legend. It doesn't
hurt that he is handsome and well built. He becomes
a real life rehet Butler. Union forces raid the King
(10:56):
ranch late in eighteen sixty three and loot and burn
everything they can. However, their principal target, Richard King, escapes,
and when the Confederates retake South Texas in eighteen sixty four,
King is back in business. With the Confederates surrender in
April eighteen sixty five, though King slips into Mexico. King's
(11:19):
story might have ended right there, but late in eighteen
sixty five, he secures a pardon from President Andrew Johnson
and resumes all of his former activities here again as
William Yancy, historian at Texas A and M University Kingsville.
Now not till eighteen sixty seven before he really starts
(11:41):
to re establish his full time cattle operation. And that
just goes to show what good sense of timing the
man had, because around eighteen sixty seven, they're starting to
develop a huge market for beef in the Northeast. As
the Northeast becomes more industrialized, people are moving into city
so they're not raising and growing their own food. Also
have a large influx of immigrants from Europe. There is
(12:03):
a need for beef, and Richard King becomes one of
the first South Texas ranchers to realize that you can
make quite a bit of money supplying that need. Now
at the time, there aren't very many railroads in Texas,
so in order to get the beef to where it
is needed, you have to walcome to where the railroads were,
(12:25):
and that meant cattle drives. Richard King will become one
of the first South Texas ranchers to drive cattle, specifically
the Texas longhorn, from his ranch in South Texas to railheads,
first in Missouri and then later in Kansas. At the
time you could purchase longhorns for between two to four
dollars ahead in South Texas, sell them for around twenty
(12:45):
dollars ahead and fort worth maybe even as high as
forty by the time you got to Kansas, and Captain
King was able to make a considerable amount of money
doing this. Eventually, longhorns, however, are going to fall out
a favor in north eastern markets. The problem along warnses
or beef is very tough and stringy, and eventually, as
(13:07):
railroads start to penetrate more of the country, it's easier
for ranchers and other areas to raise better tasting breeds
of beef, load them onto railroad cars, and ship them
to slaughterhouses in Chicago. From movement on to the east.
In eighteen sixty nine, he leads his first herd north
on the long drive for King. Coming from his ranch
(13:32):
in the extreme southwestern region of Texas. The drive to
the Kansas railheads is more than twelve hundred miles. Despite
the length of the drive and losses to stampede, swollen streams,
and indians, King makes enormous profits from eighteen sixty nine
(13:52):
through eighteen eighty four, King sends well more than one
hundred thousand head of cattle to the railheads in Camp
Order Ranges of the Northern High Plains. He continues to
plow his profit back into cattle and land until he
has hundreds of thousands of acres and tens of thousands
(14:14):
of cattle. If Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind
is a Richard King like character during the Civil War,
then Tom Dunson is a Richard King like character in
Red River. King's great cattle operation is not without problems,
which include regular cross border raids by Mexican bandidos such
(14:38):
as Juan Cortina and Juan Florists. In three years, King
loses thirty three thousand head of cattle. Yes the state
for help, but the governor refuses. In eighteen sixty seven,
King begins to fence his huge ranch. At first, his
cruise put up wooden fences. After bab wire appears in
(15:00):
eighteen seventy four, the work goes faster. In eighteen eighty
three alone, the ranch uses one hundred and ninety thousand
pounds of bob wire. During the mid eighteen seventies, King
wages a personal war with florists in his Bandidos. Entirely
at his own expense, King supplies Captain Lee McNelly and
(15:22):
his company of Texas Rangers with horses, food, and the
latest Winchester rifles for a pursuit of the Bandidos. McNelly
is spectacularly successful, but not without controversy. He not only
pursues the Mexican bandits through Texas, but right into Mexico.
(15:45):
In Mexico, he destroys several Bandidos sanctuaries and defeats of
Mexican army. While the US government is apoplectic over mcnelly's
border crossing, Richard King couldn't be happier. By the time
of his death in eighteen eighty five, King has increased
the size of his ranch to six hundred and fourteen
(16:07):
thousand acres, and those are acres he actually owns rather
than leases from the government. Following his instructions to buy
land and never sell, his son in law, A. Robert Clayburgh,
adds more acreage to the ranch, until by the eighteen
nineties the King ranch is larger than the state of
(16:29):
Rhode Island. Like the Eastern industrial barons, King tries to
control all businesses related to his ranching operation. He invests
in railroads, feed lots, packing houses, ice plants, harbors, and ships.
King in many ways is a king. To improve his longhorns,
(16:52):
King brings in Durham bulls from Kentucky. His goal is
to produce a steer with a longhorn's toughness and a
Durham's bulk. Arganis Professor Yancey. In nineteen forty, the US
Department of Agriculture would recognize the Santagatrudis breed as the
first breed of beef cattle produced in the Western Hemisphere,
and really the first anywhere in the world in over
(17:14):
a hundred years. In pursuing his dream, Richard King invents
modern ranching. Far As before him tended to raise cattle
as sideline in the cities, fresh meat was a luxury
few could afford. The King ranch turns ranching into a
big business. It also helps turn Americans into a nation
(17:35):
of beef eaters. Richard King is a colorful character whose
violent temper and wild, rough hewn nature never diminished with age.
King gets in several fights in his lifetime and seems
to enjoy them. On one occasion, a big, angry cowboy
exclaims to King that if he were not Captain King,
(17:57):
the great cattle Baron, he would not be able to
get away with the profane remarks that he just made
King is no longer a young man, But the old
cattleman explodes, damn you forget the riches and the captain title,
and let's fight, and fight they do. It is one
(18:17):
of the best fights anybody can recall. A cowboy and
the Captain pommel each other with vicious blows for half
an hour, Then, bloody and armwary, they shake hands. Thereafter,
the cowboy says he will stand back to back with
King anywhere and any time. We tend to think of
(18:40):
Hollywood's portrayals of the cattle kings of the Old West
as exaggerated. Actually, a close look at Richard King demonstrates
that such a classic question as Red River and John
Wayne's character of Tom Dunson told a tale no taller
(19:00):
than the facts of the real life of Richard King.
And great job to Greg Hangler in special thanks as
always to Roger McGrath, author of Gunfighters, him In and Vigilantes,
and also a special shout out to William Yancey, historian
at Texas A and M University Kingsville. Richard King's story
(19:21):
here on Our American Stories
And we continue here on our American Stories. And our
next story is about an American legend named Richard King.
King's legacy can be seen on every tailgate and door
of Ford's upscale F series trucks. The logo reads King Ranch.
Here to tell the story of Richard King is Roger McGrath,
author of Gunfighters, Hiuman and Vigilantes, a former US Marine
(00:34):
and former history professor at UCLA. Doctor McGrath has appeared
on numerous History Channel documentaries and is a regular contributor
to Our American Stories. Here's Roger McGrath. The cattle Kings
of the Old West carved empires out of the wilderness.
They were larger than life characters, bold, dear and intelligent, courageous, tough,
(00:59):
They had great strength character in iron wills. No cattle
king exhibited these characteristics more than Richard King. Born in
New York City to Irish immigrant parents in eighteen twenty four,
Richard King is only three years old when his parents
die and he is left in the care of an aunt.
(01:20):
At nine years old, he is apprentice to a jeweler.
The jeweler works him hard six days a week. On
his day off, the young boy walks down to the
docks of Manhattan and watches the ships come and go.
He dreams of climbing aboard a ship and sailing off.
At twelve years old, he does just that. Here's William Yancy,
(01:44):
historian at Texas A and M University, Kingsville. He ran
away to the docks in New York City and he
snuck on board an ocean going ship called the Desdemona,
and he hit out in the hold of that ship
for about two weeks to scrounge and whatever food he
could get his hands on. After two weeks, some sailors
found him in the hold of that ship, and at
(02:04):
this point the ship was already well out to sea,
so they grabbed him brought him up to the captain.
The captain asked him the question, what is your name, boy,
and he immediately answered, my name is Richard King, and
you can either throw me overboard or put me to work,
but I'm not going back. Captain seemed to be impressed
by this young man's attitude, so he put him to work.
(02:26):
For the next several years. King works in a variety
of capacities on several different ships. He demonstrates such intelligence, talent,
and leadership. The two different ship captains school him in
navigation and command of a ship. By the time he
is sixteen, is a pilot's license and knows the Gulf
(02:47):
coast and the rivers of the Cotton Kingdom like the
back of his hand. In eighteen forty two, King lists
for service in the Seminole War in Florida. It is
during his Seminal War service that he meets Mifflin Kennedy,
another ship's officer. King and Kennedy will become lifelong friends.
(03:11):
Kennedy had been born in Pennsylvania, and like King, had
first gone to see as a cabin boy and worked
his way up to become a ship's pilot. Nineteen forty three,
Richard King has grown and matured. The nineteen year old
is square jawed, well muscled, and tall for the times
at five feet eleven inches. When provoked, he could turn
(03:32):
the air of purple with profanity. That makes his friendship
with a soft spoken Quaker Nifflin Kennedy something of a surprise.
In eighteen forty seven, Richard King enlists first Second War,
taking command of the ship Colonel Cross, and rises drank
of captain in the US Navy. During the Mexican War.
(03:56):
King serves for the war's duration, transporting troops and supplies.
He becomes intimately familiar with the Texas and Mexican coasts
and with the Rio Grande River. It is during his
service in the Mexican War the King recognizes steamship service
would revolutionize the commerce of South Texas, especially the Rio
(04:19):
grand Valley. When the war ends, he buys this ship.
He commands as war surplus and is often steaming. King
soon forms a partnership with his old friend Mifflin Kennedy.
By the mid eighteen fifties, their company is operating more
than two dozen ships, and thanks in part to their
(04:40):
low rates, they're monopolizing shipping on the Rio Grande River.
They will continue in this pre eminent position for more
than two decades. Here again, as William Yancy in eighteen fifty,
Captain King had been on a steamboat run to Rio
grand City and back. He had had a rough couple
of days. He had had problems his sailors. He had
(05:01):
had problems with the engines on his steamboats. The final
straw was when he got back to Brownsville. He went
to more steamboat and the slip where he normally kept it,
and somebody had already had a boat there. Today there
was a steamboat in this slip. Now, everybody in Brown's
on you not to park their steamboats there, because that
was Richard King's slip. But today there's a steamboat there. Well,
(05:23):
this sent him over the edge. He starts cursing a
blue streak. Had to go down the river a little
ways found an empty slip to More's boat, and he
starts walking back towards this houseboat, and he's about to
give the occupant of this house boat a piece of
his mind. Well he never got a chance to do that.
There was a young lady on the houseboat who had
heard him, and she decided to confront him first, and
(05:47):
the two walk towards each other, and this young lady says, essentially,
who do you think you are using language like that?
This is my father's houseboat. He has just as much
right to be here as you do. Why don't you
spend less time making a fool of yourself and more
time washing your filthy boat? And at that Richard King
didn't really have a response. He's not someone who was
(06:07):
left speechless very often, but this time he was left
speechless he turned around and he walked back to his boat,
and then he and his sailor spent the rest of
the afternoon washing that boat. Over the next several days,
he couldn't get this young lady out of his mind.
So he's going to go to his best friend and
business partner, Mifflin Kennedy. So he goes to Kennedy and
(06:29):
ask him who's the young lady whose father's house boats
parked in my slip? And Kennedy says, well, that's miss
Henrietta Chamberlain. Her father's the new Presbyterian minister in town.
Kennedy said, there's only one way you're gonna get to
meet her, and that's if you start going to church
with her. Well, over the next several weeks and months,
he becomes a very faithful Presbyterian, is there every time
(06:53):
the doors of the church are open. And to make
a long story short, he'll begin a four year courtship
of Miss Henrietta. But eventually the two of them will
be married. In eighteen fifty four there in Brownsville, her
father performed the ceremony. The ceremony was at their church.
King takes risks when those with fainter hearts shy away.
(07:13):
He steams sections of the real Grant where others think
it impossible to go. He designs ships specifically for the
fast currents and narrow bends of the river, enabling him
to reach destinations previously considered impossibly remote. While dominating trade
(07:34):
on the real Grant, King recognizes that much of the
land of south western Texas would not support farming, but
would be good for cattle. As a result, he begins
to buy property, including the fifty three thousand acre Santa
Gertrudis Grant. He pays eighteen hundred dollars for the grant,
(07:55):
fought by many to be near or worthless because recurrent
droughts leave much of the area waste land. In eighteen
fifty four, Captain Richard King is going to find some
help for his cattle operation from an unlikely source. During
the eighteen fifties, he made several trips to Mexico to
buy cattle to stock his ranch with now one particular occasion,
(08:18):
he went to a village called Kruis, which was in
the state of Tamilpas, maybe one hundred miles southwest of
Manta Morris. This village, at the time was well known
for its cattle herds and for its vocarros or cowboys.
But they were in the middle of a three year drought.
All the grass was dead, there wasn't any water, the
cattle were dne So Richard King goes there and he
(08:40):
makes a pitch to the villagers because they owned the
herd in common, and he basically said to them, why
don't you sell me your entire herd? And the villagers said,
here's what we're willing to do. We're willing to sell
you the entire herd if you'll take as many of
us as want to go back to your ranch and
we'll work that herd for you. Well, that's a no brainer,
(09:01):
isn't it. He needs help, They need cattle to work.
So about one hundred villagers are going to come back
to the ranch in Texas with Captain King. At that
point they become the first vocaro's or cowboys on the ranch,
and over time they take a lot of pride in
working for Captain King. They start to call themselves kenanios,
which roughly translated means King's men or King's people. Whenever again,
(09:26):
King buys more land. His philosophy is simple, buy land
and never sell and when we come back, we continue
the story of Richard King here on our American stories,
(10:09):
and we returned to our American stories and the remarkable
story of cattle King Richard King. Let's continue when we
last left off. During the Civil War, Texas sees from
the Union joins the Confederacy. Within months, the US Navy
effectively blockades the Gulf Coast, cutting off the South's greatest
(10:31):
source of income, cotton exports. In these dire circumstances, King
becomes one of the Confederacy's heroes, a blockade runner. He
is so successful that he becomes a legend. It doesn't
hurt that he is handsome and well built. He becomes
a real life rehet Butler. Union forces raid the King
(10:56):
ranch late in eighteen sixty three and loot and burn
everything they can. However, their principal target, Richard King, escapes,
and when the Confederates retake South Texas in eighteen sixty four,
King is back in business. With the Confederates surrender in
April eighteen sixty five, though King slips into Mexico. King's
(11:19):
story might have ended right there, but late in eighteen
sixty five, he secures a pardon from President Andrew Johnson
and resumes all of his former activities here again as
William Yancy, historian at Texas A and M University Kingsville.
Now not till eighteen sixty seven before he really starts
(11:41):
to re establish his full time cattle operation. And that
just goes to show what good sense of timing the
man had, because around eighteen sixty seven, they're starting to
develop a huge market for beef in the Northeast. As
the Northeast becomes more industrialized, people are moving into city
so they're not raising and growing their own food. Also
have a large influx of immigrants from Europe. There is
(12:03):
a need for beef, and Richard King becomes one of
the first South Texas ranchers to realize that you can
make quite a bit of money supplying that need. Now
at the time, there aren't very many railroads in Texas,
so in order to get the beef to where it
is needed, you have to walcome to where the railroads were,
(12:25):
and that meant cattle drives. Richard King will become one
of the first South Texas ranchers to drive cattle, specifically
the Texas longhorn, from his ranch in South Texas to railheads,
first in Missouri and then later in Kansas. At the
time you could purchase longhorns for between two to four
dollars ahead in South Texas, sell them for around twenty
(12:45):
dollars ahead and fort worth maybe even as high as
forty by the time you got to Kansas, and Captain
King was able to make a considerable amount of money
doing this. Eventually, longhorns, however, are going to fall out
a favor in north eastern markets. The problem along warnses
or beef is very tough and stringy, and eventually, as
(13:07):
railroads start to penetrate more of the country, it's easier
for ranchers and other areas to raise better tasting breeds
of beef, load them onto railroad cars, and ship them
to slaughterhouses in Chicago. From movement on to the east.
In eighteen sixty nine, he leads his first herd north
on the long drive for King. Coming from his ranch
(13:32):
in the extreme southwestern region of Texas. The drive to
the Kansas railheads is more than twelve hundred miles. Despite
the length of the drive and losses to stampede, swollen streams,
and indians, King makes enormous profits from eighteen sixty nine
(13:52):
through eighteen eighty four, King sends well more than one
hundred thousand head of cattle to the railheads in Camp
Order Ranges of the Northern High Plains. He continues to
plow his profit back into cattle and land until he
has hundreds of thousands of acres and tens of thousands
(14:14):
of cattle. If Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind
is a Richard King like character during the Civil War,
then Tom Dunson is a Richard King like character in
Red River. King's great cattle operation is not without problems,
which include regular cross border raids by Mexican bandidos such
(14:38):
as Juan Cortina and Juan Florists. In three years, King
loses thirty three thousand head of cattle. Yes the state
for help, but the governor refuses. In eighteen sixty seven,
King begins to fence his huge ranch. At first, his
cruise put up wooden fences. After bab wire appears in
(15:00):
eighteen seventy four, the work goes faster. In eighteen eighty
three alone, the ranch uses one hundred and ninety thousand
pounds of bob wire. During the mid eighteen seventies, King
wages a personal war with florists in his Bandidos. Entirely
at his own expense, King supplies Captain Lee McNelly and
(15:22):
his company of Texas Rangers with horses, food, and the
latest Winchester rifles for a pursuit of the Bandidos. McNelly
is spectacularly successful, but not without controversy. He not only
pursues the Mexican bandits through Texas, but right into Mexico.
(15:45):
In Mexico, he destroys several Bandidos sanctuaries and defeats of
Mexican army. While the US government is apoplectic over mcnelly's
border crossing, Richard King couldn't be happier. By the time
of his death in eighteen eighty five, King has increased
the size of his ranch to six hundred and fourteen
(16:07):
thousand acres, and those are acres he actually owns rather
than leases from the government. Following his instructions to buy
land and never sell, his son in law, A. Robert Clayburgh,
adds more acreage to the ranch, until by the eighteen
nineties the King ranch is larger than the state of
(16:29):
Rhode Island. Like the Eastern industrial barons, King tries to
control all businesses related to his ranching operation. He invests
in railroads, feed lots, packing houses, ice plants, harbors, and ships.
King in many ways is a king. To improve his longhorns,
(16:52):
King brings in Durham bulls from Kentucky. His goal is
to produce a steer with a longhorn's toughness and a
Durham's bulk. Arganis Professor Yancey. In nineteen forty, the US
Department of Agriculture would recognize the Santagatrudis breed as the
first breed of beef cattle produced in the Western Hemisphere,
and really the first anywhere in the world in over
(17:14):
a hundred years. In pursuing his dream, Richard King invents
modern ranching. Far As before him tended to raise cattle
as sideline in the cities, fresh meat was a luxury
few could afford. The King ranch turns ranching into a
big business. It also helps turn Americans into a nation
(17:35):
of beef eaters. Richard King is a colorful character whose
violent temper and wild, rough hewn nature never diminished with age.
King gets in several fights in his lifetime and seems
to enjoy them. On one occasion, a big, angry cowboy
exclaims to King that if he were not Captain King,
(17:57):
the great cattle Baron, he would not be able to
get away with the profane remarks that he just made
King is no longer a young man, But the old
cattleman explodes, damn you forget the riches and the captain title,
and let's fight, and fight they do. It is one
(18:17):
of the best fights anybody can recall. A cowboy and
the Captain pommel each other with vicious blows for half
an hour, Then, bloody and armwary, they shake hands. Thereafter,
the cowboy says he will stand back to back with
King anywhere and any time. We tend to think of
(18:40):
Hollywood's portrayals of the cattle kings of the Old West
as exaggerated. Actually, a close look at Richard King demonstrates
that such a classic question as Red River and John
Wayne's character of Tom Dunson told a tale no taller
(19:00):
than the facts of the real life of Richard King.
And great job to Greg Hangler in special thanks as
always to Roger McGrath, author of Gunfighters, him In and Vigilantes,
and also a special shout out to William Yancey, historian
at Texas A and M University Kingsville. Richard King's story
(19:21):
here on Our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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