Chisholm Trail: A Song History

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The song takes its name from a cattle route. According to the Handbook of Texas, drovers used the Chisholm Trail from the summer of 1867 to 1884 to walk Texas herds north to Kansas railheads, among them Abilene, where Joseph G. McCoy had persuaded railroad officials to set up a shipping point[1]. The name honors Jesse Chisholm, a trader of mixed Scottish and Cherokee ancestry who also worked as an interpreter and go-between, and whose route between his trading posts in Indian Territory was known locally as Chisholm's Trail; he died in 1868, before that year's drives began[1]. The Oklahoma Historical Society's encyclopedia says the name was in use by 1870 and that a typical herd numbered 2,500 to 3,000 head[2]. Kansas quarantine laws against Texas cattle helped close the trail in the mid-1880s, though the two encyclopedias date the decisive law differently, to 1885 and 1886[1][2]. The Handbook adds that the name was popularly attached to the whole route after 1911, when good-roads campaigners proposed it for a highway, and it says that campaign drew on the name's popularity "in songs, fiction, and folklore"[1].

Thomas Eakins watercolor of a bearded cowboy in a wide hat and neckerchief singing and playing a banjo

Thomas Eakins, Cowboy Singing, watercolor and graphite, ca. 1892. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its singing cowboy; it has no connection to the song.

The Traditional Ballad Index (Roud 3438) lists the author of "The Old Chisholm Trail" as unknown and describes a loose string of verses about the hardships of a cowboy's working life, and notes that there is no firm line between its printable versions and its bawdy ones, since singers could make it as rough as they pleased[3]. John A. Lomax printed it, with a tune, in the first edition of Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, published by Sturgis & Walton in November 1910[4]; 1910 is also the earliest date the Ballad Index gives for the song[3]. In his collector's note Lomax even used the trail as a yardstick, saying some cowboy songs had traveled as far as the trail ran, from Texas to Montana[4]. Writing in the Kansas Historical Quarterly in 1939, Myra Hull ranked it the most famous of the songs about the long drive north and drew on versions supplied by her brother and her nephew; her brother had lived near the trail by 1873[5].

Harry K. McClintock, billed as "Mac" with his Haywire Orchestra, recorded the song in Oakland, California, in March 1928, and it was issued on Victor 21421[6]. The Ballad Index lists other early commercial versions, among them the Cartwright Brothers (recorded 1928) and Jules Allen (1929)[3]. Folklorists also recorded it in the field: John and Ruby Lomax recorded Frank Goodwyn singing it at Falfurrias, Texas, on 30 April 1939, a recording now held by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress[7]. For dulcimer players, it appears in Stephen Seifert's Cowboy Songs, a collection of traditional cowboy tunes arranged chord-melody style for DAD tuning[8].

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Sources

  1. Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas (Wayne Ludwig): "The Chisholm Trail: A Historic Route for Texas Cattle".
  2. Oklahoma Historical Society, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture (Steven D. Dortch): "Chisholm Trail".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Chisholm Trail (I), The".
  4. Internet Archive: "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (John A. Lomax, Sturgis & Walton, 1910).
  5. Kansas Historical Society, Kansas Historical Quarterly (Myra E. Hull, 1939): "Cowboy Ballads".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor matrix PBVE-42113. The old Chisholm Trail / Haywire Orchestra; Mac [i.e., Harry K. McClintock]".
  7. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center: "Old Chisholm Trail" (Frank Goodwyn, Falfurrias, Texas, 1939).
  8. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".