Thomas A. Dwyer practiced law in London and Dublin for 11 years with little to show for it. He had so few clients he was making about $50 a year. Tired of the lack of opportunity and confines of city life, he departed for the wilds of Texas. He arrived in Corpus Christi on Dec. 2, 1848, on the steamship "Fanny."
Dwyer, greenhorn though he was, went to work as a "mustanger" hunting wild horses. What a change that must have been, going from chasing legal briefs in Dublin to chasing wild mustangs in South Texas.
In 1849, immense herds of the wild descendants of horses brought by Spanish conquistadors roamed the prairies of South Texas. The herds stretched as far as the eye could sweep the horizon. The whole country, Dwyer once wrote, seemed to be running.
The mustangs were methodically and efficiently hunted down and caught. The best specimens were tamed and sold. Many others were killed for their hides.
And who were the mustangers? Dwyer was not typical. A look at the 1850 census for Corpus Christi provides the answer. In that census, Hispanic heads of household were almost to a man listed as "herdsman." Some were vaqueros, but there were few ranches in the area at that time. Most of these "herdsmen" were mustangers. Dwyer in an article in 1872 wrote, "Many Mexicans [sic], whose families resided at Corpus Christi, Goliad, and San Antonio, and also at towns along the lower Rio Grande from Laredo down, supported themselves by running, that is, catching wild cattle and by mustanging, or hunting wild horses."
The mustangers worked in well-organized groups under a capitan. Dwyer in time commanded his own outfit. J. W. Moses was a capitan of mustangers; so was Cecilio Balerio, who later commanded an irregular federal cavalry unit during the Civil War. One of the most famous mustangers was Maugricio Roque, called "El Indio" because he had been a captive of Comanches. Dwyer considered "El Indio" to be the greatest mustanger of them all.
Both Dwyer and Moses described the operations of the mustangers. A pen - corral de aventura - was built of mesquite posts in a spiral shape, with an opening that could be quickly closed. Wings like a "V," built of brush, stretched some 700 or 800 yards away. A herd of mustangs would be steered into the open end of the "V" which narrowed until it reached the corral.
Where mustangs were found grazing, the men who drove them in the direction of the wings were called aventurers. Once a herd was in the mouth of the V, mustangers called recibidors (receivers) closed in to keep the horses moving toward the corral. Once the herd entered the corral, moving in a circle that closed in on itself, the enserado (closer) stepped into the gap, waving a red blanket to scare the horses and keep them from running out again. The cortador (cutter) cut off their escape by closing the gate with mesquite rails.
If there was no bad management or contretemps, Moses wrote, the mustangs would be rushed into the pen and a catch, great or small, would be secured. The numbers caught were frequently so great, and their value so trivial, that they would be sold for a dollar or a dollar and a half each. A mustang with good "points" might bring $5. But sometimes there were problems. Moses described one at a place near Amargosa Creek.
"We made such a large drove," Moses wrote, "that when we got them going for the pen, the rush they made was uncontrollable. The cortador, whose duty was to cut off the herd when the pen was full, was unable to do so. They went with such a rush, and it being on a downward slope, he could do nothing . . . The animals in their wild stampede ran over one another. The bottom of the corral was covered with crippled and dying animals. Others in the herd still rushed, crushing and bruising themselves against the pickets until the pen could not withstand the pressure. It gave way. The furious, thundering horses, clambering over their dead and dying companions, vanished in a cloud of dust . . . The stench arising from the dead carcasses rendered the atmosphere unendurable. It obliged us to move away." Moses called the place "El Hediondo" (the stinking). It was symbolic of the horrible end meted out to the wild mustangs in the Wild Horse Desert.
Moses wrote that the herds of mustangs were so plentiful in the early 1850s that no one would have believed that they could have been caught out, killed out, or done away with. But the mustangs didn't stand a chance against organized human energy. The boundless herds disappeared within a decade of Dwyer's arrival in 1848. Like the buffalo, the mustangs were hunted to the point of extinction. Something beautiful, wild and free was gone forever. Even the mustangers lamented their passing.
Murphy Givens is Viewpoints Editor of the Caller-Times. Phone: 886-4315; e-mail: givensm@ caller.com. His radio commentary airs on KEDT (90.3 FM) and KVRT-Victoria (90.7 FM) at 7:35 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. each Friday.
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