Jeff Davis and Operation Camel

If plans made by the Secretary of War back in the 1850's had materialized, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and all their Western kith and kin might have been camel riders.

Today, Roy Rogers would be mounted on a camel instead of on his horse, Trigger, while the Lone Ranger would be shouting "Hi-yo, Silver!" to a one-humped steed. But history decreed otherwise and so Wild West fans of the twentieth century need not watch Hopalong Cassidy gallop into the sunset aboard a four-legged "ship of the desert."

The project of using camels to carry mail, passengers, and freight across the "Great American Desert" is now an almost forgotten item buried in records long ago placed in the "closed" files of War Department archives. But those records bear illustrious names and express hopes that once ran high. They tell of hard work and great adventure.

Today an automobile, bus, or train will carry a person, a letter, or a package from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a few days. By air, the time is reduced to a few hours. But a century ago the journey, even from St. Louis to California, was a slow one. Weeks of travel by covered wagon or stage coach were required, while hostile Indians and other dangers menaced every mile of the way.

From New York or other Atlantic coast ports a journey to California meant a hazardous voyage around Cape Horn, or a rather rough and not always dependable land jaunt across the Isthmus of Panama between two shorter ocean voyages.

Travel was slow for man and messages but, until the California gold rush started in the stirring days of '49, there was little demand for greater speed. But as the mid-century decade opened, great events were taking shape. The gold fields were booming in the West. Back East the slavery question was looming even larger and the North and the South were each seeking to gain advantages in the fields of trade and transportation.

Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce-and later President of the Confederate States of America-was a firm believer in the camel project. If camel caravans successfully crossed the Sahara and other vast desert wastes in Africa and Asia, he reasoned, why couldn't they also cross the great desert in the American Southwest? It took several years for the idea to catch on but finally, in 1855, Congress appropriated $30,000 and the experiment that today probably would be called "operation camel" was launched.

Jeff Davis was not the first to suggest the introduction of camels to the New World. The Spaniards tried it in Peru in the sixteenth century, while a slave trader, so the record says, brought some to Virginia in 1701. There are also reports of camels in Jamaica prior to the American Revolution.

It was a Major George H. Crosman, USA, who first recommended camels for military use, and he made his suggestion in 1836 after seeing service in Florida against the Seminole Indians. Major Henry C. Wayne, who later headed the first camel-buying expedition, suggested the idea to Jefferson Davis in 1848, when the latter was U. S. Senator from Mississippi. It was this suggestion that bore fruit later when Davis became Secretary of War.

At this same time the British were using camels in the Crimean War. British reports said the animals could carry loads of 1,000 pounds twenty-five to thirty miles a day, while a corps of men mounted on camels could cover seventy miles in twelve hours. In fighting, the camels could be made to kneel, hobbled, in the form of a square, thus giving shelter to as many as 1,000 men.

As for the animal to be used the term "camel" as employed by Major Wayne and his successors referred to both the two-humped Bactrian and the single-humped Arabian animal. Dromedaries were saddle or riding varieties of the single-humped Arabian breed. None of the two-humped Bactrians were used for riding.

Jefferson Davis had high hopes for his "operation camelel." In his report to the President on December 1, 1853, Secretary of War Davis wrote: "For military purposes, for expresses, and for reconnaissances, it is believed, the dromedary would supply a want now seriously felt in our service; and for transportation with troops rapidly moving across the country, the camel, it is believed, would remove an obstacle which now serves greatly to diminish the value of our troops on the western frontier."

Camel enthusiasts believed that a corps of scouts, mounted on camels, would once and for all settle the Indian troubles. Every Apache, Sioux and Comanche warrior would turn tail and run at the very sight of such a force. Further, a few small cannon or guns shooting shrapnel, mounted on and fired from camel back, would soon discourage any misguided war chief who might be inclined to show fight.

Camels could carry passengers. Camels could carry freight, and mail. Camels could effectively link the East with the West, faster and more efficiently than could either horses or mules. And thus, amid a flurry of optimism, the search for camels began.

Two men, U. S. Navy Attache (and later Admiral) David D. Porter and Major Wayne were sent as camel collectors. Major Wayne went first to England, where he studied camel lore at the London Zoological Garden, and from there he visited Paris and Genoa, still studying camels.

Porter, meanwhile, along with his job of commanding the store-ship Supply, visited the Grand Duke of Tuscany, eight miles from Pisa in Italy, where he said he saw "250 camels doing the work of 1,000 horses."

Thus both men were thoroughly sold on the camel project before they met in Tunis and bought the first humped animal in August of 1855. Two more were presented to the United States officers with the compliments of the Bey of Tunis. In Egypt, where camel export was forbidden by law, they had to obtain special permits.

Getting the camels aboard ship presented another obstacle since that was before the days of adaptable loading machinery. Yankee ingenuity solved the problem and the officers constructed a 20 x 7-foot, flat-bottomed boat. They also built a camel car which would fit snugly onto the boat and, once the camel was coaxed into it, the car was mounted on trucks, rolled down to the beach and onto the boat. In this manner two camels could be loaded per hour.

Wayne and Porter left the Turkish port of Smyrna on February 15, 1856, with their first shipment of thirty-three camels, bringing along a group of young natives to serve as camel drivers. One camel was so tall (seven feet, five inches) that Porter had to cut a hole in the floor of the deck which served as ceiling in order to make room for the animal's hump.

The voyage was a stormy one. Gales and rough water made it necessary for the camels to be tied in a kneeling position for weeks at a time. The officers reported the natives as "worthless" and most of the camel care fell on the American crew-who knew nothing whatsoever about camels.

Three months after departure, on May 14, 1856, the ship reached Indianola, Texas, with one more camel than when it had started-one had died, and two were born during the voyage. When the desert beasts felt solid earth under their feet once more, onlookers reported that they "became excited, reared, kicked, cried out, breaking halters, tearing up pickets-demonstrating joy."

Porter went back to Asia Minor and returned the following year with forty-four more camels. Other shipments were brought in, usually by private individuals, until 1862. From time to time these were sold at auction but the bids were disappointingly low. Highest bid given for a group auctioned at San Francisco in 1860 was $475 per head. The owners had hoped for a minimum of $1,200 per camel.

Meanwhile, experiments were in progress with the first government-sponsored group of animals. After a rest at Camp Verde, sixty miles northwest of San Antonio, their work began.

In charge of the operation this time was Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who became even more of a camel enthusiast than had Wayne and Porter before him. Beale, who later attained the rank of General in California, had seen service as a naval lieutenant in the Mexican War. He carried the first California gold to the East, and he helped explore portions of the American Southwest. In the five-year period prior to his camel expedition he had served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

Beale was never lukewarm toward the camel experi-ment-he asked for the job. It was a brain-child of his own, too, he said. The idea of camel caravans had come to him while he was exploring Death Valley in California with the celebrated scout, Kit Carson.

Beale's job was to survey a wagon route from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, to the Colorado River, at the 35th parallel. Twenty-five of the Camp Verde camels were assigned to him and he was to test their fitness for service in the deserts of the Southwest while he surveyed.

The expedition wound its slow way across deserts and mountains, taking most of the year 1857 and part of 1858 to make the trip. From San Antonio the trail led west almost to the Rio Grande, then northwest across the Pecos to Fort Stockton. Thence it turned west and slightly south to the Rio Grande again, following the river up to El Paso and then on to Albuquerque. It went west again into Arizona (with a side trip northwest to Fort Defiance) and on to Mohave City on the Colorado River. After crossing into California, the camels turned slightly northwest to Tejon, 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Their long journey was over.

On the trip Beale tested his humped protégés in every way possible. Quotes from his official report show what he thought of them.

"Their perfect docility and patience under difficulties renders them invaluable, and my only regret at present is that I have not double their number," he wrote enthusiastically. In describing how the camels carried water supplies for the rest of the party-men, horses, and mules-he reported, "Six of them are worth half the mules we have, although we have good ones."

In September when the expedition was near the Mogollon Mountains in Arizona, Beale wrote in his journal: "The camels put up with any food offered them without complaint, are always up with the wagons, so perfectly docile and quiet that they are the admiration of the whole camp." Not all the men had been as enthusiastic as Beale, as his account indicates. "At starting, the majority of men doubted the idea of camels even getting as far as Fort Davis," he wrote on that same September day. "But at this time there is not a man in camp who is not delighted with them. They are better today than when we left Camp Verde with them, especially since our men have learned, by experience, the best mode of packing them."

At other times he reported that the camels ate grease-wood and mesquite branches with apparent relish; that they went without water for from six to ten days, and even carried it for the mules; that the drivers said camels would get fat where a jackass would starve to death; that camels seemed little interested in water under conditions where mules would go wild, become useless or break down entirely.

Would their leathery, hoofless feet carry them across the stony Southwest?

Beale answered that question when he reported "The road near the Pecos River is hard, firm, and strewn with sharp, angular, flinty gravel-the size of a pea-which rasps at the least friction. Dogs cannot travel it. The camel has no shuffle in its gait, but lifts its feet perpendicularly from the ground and replaces them without sliding. The coarsely granulated and yielding nature of the foot, very tough like gutta percha, yields sufficiently without wearing off and enables them to travel continuously in country where other barefooted beasts could not last a week."

How much of a load could the camel carry?

Major Wayne answered that first in San Antonio when he showed a skeptical crowd that a camel could rise and walk under a load of 1,256 pounds. Beale reported his camels could carry loads of 1,000 pounds between thirty and forty miles a day.

Could they stand cold weather?

In January Beale pitched his camp within a few hundred yards of the summit of the Sierra Nevada and his camels lived happily and grew fat in two and three feet of snow. When the camp wagon was stalled by a snowstorm, camels were sent to the rescue, bringing the load through ice and snow to camp. Meanwhile, a strong six-mule team was unable to extricate the empty wagon.

Could camels swim?

Beale swam his in gangs of five across the Colorado River, reporting that they crossed with ease and with more strength than horses and mules.

How did the camel compare with a horse for riding?

For a special trip away from camp, Beale mounted the white dromedary, Seid, traveled eight miles an hour with the "least effort," and made twenty-seven miles in three hours. Seid was not tired, his rider reported. "It was as much as I could do to hold him on my return and I could not have done so if I had not put the chain part of his halter around his lower jaw.

A horse or mule, under similar circumstances, would have taken twice as long-corn fed. Seid worked every day and grazed entirely on grass.

So, as his train of camels, horses, and mules plodded its slow way across the Southwest, Beale placed more and more faith in his exotic charges. We can picture him on a July day, hot, sunburned, and dusty, viewing his strange caravan with pride and affection.

"As our line of wagons ascended the hill the camels appeared on the further side," he wrote near Devils Run and Fort Clark, "winding down the steep road, and made a picture well worthy of the pen of a great artist. The steep grey rocks, the beautiful green bottom or meadow, the clear sparkling stream, the loose animals, the wagons and teams, and then old Mahomet, with the long line of his grave and patient followers, winding cautiously, picking step by step their way down the opposite side, was a very interesting and beautiful scene."

But there were few others who shared Beale's faith and enthusiasm. After the trip from San Antonio to California, little more was done with the camel project.

Camels were "furriners" and already the partnership of man and horse was well established in the West. Camels were expensive. A man could catch and break his own mustang pony, or could buy some sort of horse or mule-flesh for a very low price.

Camels, despite Beale's enthusiastic praise of their gentleness and docility, are noted for their surly dispositions. The notion persisted that only the imported Arabs could manage them, and that camels only understood orders in the Syrian language. Indeed, Beale, himself, learned Syrian and used that language when he drove his famous sulky-team of camels between his ranch at Tejon and Los Angeles.

Mexicans marveled, and traveled miles to see the strange creatures. Prospectors, mule skinners, cowboys, and plains-men stayed by their horses. The horses and mules in their turn took fright at the first approach of the camels. They snorted, dashed around the corral, or stampeded whenever they caught the strange scent. Naturally, horsemen disliked anything that would thus upset their chosen means of trans-portation. This was possibly the chief local reason for the prejudice against camels.

No Indian reaction to the camel is recorded. But, at a time when no man's scalp was safe in its natural habitat on the Western plains, there is also scant record of an Indian attack on a camel caravan. Apparently the redskins gave the big animals a wide and respectful berth.

Officially, the government soon forgot the experiment. More important events were claiming attention. Jefferson Davis, with secession growing more and more imminent, had other things to think about than a handful of camels in the Southwest.

Some of the animals from Tejon were sold to private individuals, and there are scattered accounts of them at work. Some helped build a portion of the road used by the famous Butterfield stage coach line. Others were used in Nevada to carry salt from a marsh in Esmeralda County to the Washoe silver mill 200 miles away. Bad care, alkali, and the salt water that matted in the long hair on their humps made them sorry looking creatures. The luckiest of the lot were sold to carnivals and circuses.

Back in Texas, after the war began, Confederate forces took over the camel herd at Camp Verde and the alien beasts were neglected by Southern horse-lovers. Some of the animals escaped into Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona and on those open ranges soldiers and hunters frequently saw and pursued them during the war years and for many years thereafter.

When Camp Verde returned to United States control the remaining camels were sold to the highest bidder-the bids were sealed and the highest one was for $31 a head. One by one they were sold to circuses and caravans and as late as 1903 a San Antonio paper reported a camel with a "U.S." brand in a midway show.

As for the wild ones, some enterprising Frenchmen rounded up twenty or thirty of them near Tucson in 1877, broke them to pack, and took them to Virginia City, Nevada. But the attempt was a failure and the camels were driven back to Arizona and turned loose again.

For years up to and beyond the turn of the century prospectors and lonely hunters reported seeing an occasional camel in the desert. Legends grew up about a "great red camel" and a gray one, still wearing a weather-beaten saddle. Occasionally hunting parties were arranged to kill the ones that were becoming nuisances.

Westerners never liked camels, it seems. Nevada passed an act in 1875 making it unlawful for owners to let camels or dromedaries run at large on public roads or highways, and violation of this law called for a fine of not less than $25 or more than $100, imprisonment of from ten to thirty days, or both. The law was repealed in 1899; apparently it had become obsolete.

It has been many years since a wild camel has been sighted in the Southwest. Normally a camel's life span is about forty years, and apparently the animals bred in a wild state in this country. But whether they have survived to the third and fourth generation is doubtful. However, there are still vast stretches of desert and mountain in the Southwest uncrossed by road and seldom traveled. There are equally empty expanses across the Mexican border in Sonora and Chihuahua. A few camels may survive, although such a thing is improbable.

As for the natives who accompanied the camels-they were not necessarily "Arabs" at all. One Turk, Hadji Ali, became "Hi Jolly," a well known western character. The final survivor, "Greek George," naturalized as George Al-len, nee George Xaralampo, died in Whittier, California, in 1915.

Why did Jeff Davis' "operation camel" fail?

From the records it is hard to find a satisfactory answer. Governmental interest, never more than lukewarm, disintegrated. The Civil War attracted official interest elsewhere -Jeff Davis certainly had other things to think about. Soon after the war the transcontinental railroads made animal transportation obsolete for long hauls.

But the chief reason for the failure of "operation camel" seems to lie in the fact that the West was horse-minded. The camel was an ungainly alien with a reputation for being bad tempered. The Westerner, who had no other companion than his horse for days at a time, made a friend of his mount and he never got properly acquainted with the camel.

And so "operation camel" passed into history and was forgotten. The camel went back to the circus, and Buffalo Bill with all his kind, down the years to Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, and all who may follow after them, will gallop across the Western plains mounted on horses, not on camels.