what was the shawnee trail used for? what states did it go to?

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The Texas Road, also known as the Shawnee Trail, Sedalia Trail, or Kansas Trail, was a major merchandise and emigrant route to Texas beyond Indian Territory (later Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri). Established during the Mexican War by emigrants rushing to Texas, information technology remained an important road beyond Indian Territory until Oklahoma statehood. The Shawnee Trail was the earliest and easternmost route past which Texas Longhorn cattle were taken to the north. It played a significant office in the history of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas in the early and mid-1800s.

The Shawnee Trail route [edit]

"Of the master routes by which Texas Longhorn cattle were taken afoot to railheads to the northward, the primeval and easternmost was the Shawnee Trail. Used before and just later on the Ceremonious War, the Shawnee Trail gathered cattle from due east and west of its main stem, which passed through Austin, Waco, and Dallas. It crossed the Red River at Stone Bluff, near Preston, and led north along the eastern edge of what became Oklahoma, a road later on followed closely by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. The drovers took over a trail long used by Indians in hunting and raiding and past southbound settlers from the Midwest; the latter called it the Texas Route. North of Fort Gibson, the cattle road split into final branches that ended in such Missouri points as St. Louis, Sedalia, Independence, Westport, and Kansas City, and in Baxter Springs and other towns in eastern Kansas. Early drovers referred to their route as the cattle trail, the Sedalia Trail, the Kansas Trail, or merely the trail. Why some began calling information technology the Shawnee Trail is uncertain, but the name may take been suggested past a Shawnee village on the Texas side of the Red River just below the trail crossing or past the Shawnee Hills, which the route skirted on the eastern side before crossing the Canadian River."^[ane]

The Shawnee Trail, followed the road from Colbert'south Ferry, Indian Territory, in the south, beyond the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee Nations, to Baxter Springs, Kansas, in the northward. Later, the Shawnee Trail branched further w. The showtime road was so called the East Shawnee Trail and the co-operative called the West Shawnee Trail. The East Shawnee Trail followed the Grand River to Fort Gibson. The West Shawnee Trail which started in Missouri and passed through Fort Wayne before joining the other trail continuing to the Blood-red River on the Texas edge. Several stations were fix along the road where travelers could residue and refresh their horses. The western co-operative specially remained the chief cattle trail from Texas until the opening of the Chisholm Trail (or Abilene Trail) post-obit the Civil War.

History of the Trail [edit]

Texas herds were taken up the Shawnee Trail equally early every bit the 1840s, and use of the route gradually increased, just by 1853, problem had begun to plague some of the drovers. In June of that year, as 3,000 cattle were trailed through western Missouri, local farmers blocked their passage and forced the drovers to plough back. This opposition arose from the fact that the Longhorns carried ticks that bore a serious disease that the farmers called Texas fever. The Texas cattle were immune to this disease, but the ticks that they left on their bedding areas infected the local cattle, causing many to die and making others unfit to sell. Some herds avoided the blockades, and the antagonism became stronger and more than constructive. In 1855, aroused farmers in western and central Missouri formed vigilance committees, stopped some of the herds, and killed whatsoever Texas cattle that entered their counties. Missouri stockmen in several canton seats called on their legislature for action. The effect was a law, effective in Dec of that year, which banned diseased cattle from existence brought into or through the state. This law failed, though, since the Longhorns were non themselves diseased. Farmers formed armed bands that turned back some herds, though others managed to get through. Several drovers took their herds n through the eastern edge of Kansas, but in that location, likewise, they met opposition from farmers, who induced their territorial legislature to pass a protective law in 1859.

During the Ceremonious War the Shawnee Trail was virtually unused for cattle drives. Yet both sides of the Ceremonious State of war used the route heavily to move supplies and troops. Union and Confederate forces fought over command of the route, clashing at the Battle of Love Springs and Boxing of Baxter Springs on the road.

After the war, with Texas overflowing with surplus cattle with almost no local markets, pressure for trailing became stronger than ever. In the spring of 1866, an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 cattle were pointed north. Although some herds were forced to turn dorsum, others managed to get through, while still others were delayed or diverted around the hostile farm settlements. James Thou. Daugherty, a Texas youth of 16, was one who felt the sting of the vigilantes. Trailing his herd of 500 steers north, he was attacked in southeastern Kansas by a band of Jayhawkers dressed as hunters. The mobsters stampeded the herd and killed one of the trail hands (some sources say they tied Daugherty to a tree with his ain lookout rope, then whipped him with hickory switches.). Afterward being freed and burying the dead cowboy, Daugherty recovered nigh 350 of the cattle. He continued at dark in a roundabout manner and sold his steers in Fort Scott at a profit.

With six states enacting laws in the kickoff one-half of 1867 confronting trailing, Texas cattlemen realized the need for a new trail that would brim the farm settlements and thus avoid the trouble over tick fever. In 1867, a young Illinois livestock dealer, Joseph G. McCoy, built marketplace facilities at Abilene, Kansas, at the terminus of the Chisholm Trail. The new route to the west of the Shawnee Trail soon began carrying the bulk of the Texas herds, leaving the earlier trail to dwindle for a few years and expire.

The Texas Road eventually became role of U.S. Route 69.

See likewise [edit]

• Shawnee Trail (West Virginia), a portion of the Bully Indian Warpath (Seneca Trail)
• http://www.redriverhistorian.com/shawneetrail.html, an online commodity about this trail

References [edit]

1. ^ Gard, Wayne, "Shawnee Trail", Handbook of Texas Online, due south.v. (accessed Baronial 19, 2006)

• Foreman, Grant. "Early on Trails Through Oklahoma", Chronicles of Oklahoma 3:ii (June 1925) 99-119 (accessed August sixteen, 2006).
• BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wayne Gard, "The Shawnee Trail," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 56 (January 1953). Joseph G. McCoy, Celebrated Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest (Kansas City, Missouri: Ramsey, Millett, and Hudson, 1874; rpt., Philadelphia: Porcupine, 1974). From the Shawnee Trail website with permission from the Shawnee Trail Partnership.

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Road

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