The camels of Texas

If Jefferson Davis and others could have had their way, camels might have become as much a symbol of Texas as the longhorn or mustang. Mules, oxen and other beasts of burden might have found themselves unemployed when it was time to cross American deserts and mountains. Cowboys would have a whole different set of skills and college sports teams would have hump-backed mascots. 

That it didn’t work out that way isn’t wholly the camels’ fault. They proved more than adequate for the tasks assigned them, but Davis and the rest of the country had to shift attention a little episode known as the American Civil War. 

Davis, a U.S. Senator who would later serve as the U.S. Secretary of War, had long supported the annexation of Texas but transportation in the rougher portions of the state, especially West Texas, was problematic. Accepting the commonly held notion that most of the Western U.S. was a Great American Desert, Davis thought camels might be the solution. 

As Secretary of War, Davis’ first annual report to President Franklin Pierce included some lobbying on behalf of the humble and hard-working dromedary— a fancy word for a single-humped camel:  “Napoleon, when in Egypt, used with marked success the dromedary in subduing the Arabs whose habits and country were very similar to those of the mounted Indians of our Western plains. France is about to adopt the dromedary in Algeria. For like military purposes, for expresses and for reconnaisances, it is believed that the dromedary will fill a want now seriously felt in our military service.”

In 1857, Davis helped add $30,000 to the appropriation bill for the “purchase of camels and the importation of dromedaries, to be employed for military purposes.”

And so it came to pass that 32 camels, mostly single-humped Arabian dromedaries along with a few two-humped Bactrians and some hybrids— along with one calf born at sea— arrived at the now defunct port city of Indianola in the spring of 1857. 

Maj. H.C. Wayne, who bought the camels during a trafficking foray up and down the North African coast, brought them to Texas, eventually settling at Camp Verde near present-day Kerrville. From that base of operations those camels, along with a second group from Egypt, went to work with the same accepting nonchalance for which the species is known.

Wayne’s first test was an expedition of six camels from Camp Verde to San Antonio. The camels passed with flying colors. He wrote: “From this trial it will be seen that the six camels transported over the same ground and distance the weights of two six mule wagons and gained on them 42 ½ hours in time.” 

A trip to the Big Bend region of Texas, a rugged and arid land that had defeated previous expeditions, might have convinced the skeptics. For the camels, it was a walk in the park. At one point they traveled more than 100 miles in four days without water, which allowed the expedition to save its water without a need to share it with horses or mules. The group eventually found water and reported that the camels “arrived at the water in good condition and showed no evidence of unusual distress.”

Lieutenant Edward Beale took a caravan from Texas to California to see if camels made the trip any easier. Beale saw a lot to like in the camels, writing: “They are the most docile, patient and easily managed creatures in the world and infinitely more workable than mules.”

As hostilities between the North and South escalated and Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, U.S. officials were quick to wash their hands of any enterprise with Davis’ fingerprints. The camel experiment faded onto to back pages of history. 

That’s probably just as well. We can only imagine what kind of havoc camels would have wreaked on native vegetation. Horses ran away at the sight, or maybe the smell of camels. For all its attributes, the camel is a foul-smelling and often foul-tempered animal with the annoying habit of puking on people who displease them; even the stubbornest mule doesn’t resort to pukery. 

 “The chief objection to using camels as beasts of burden in Texas is that horses usually run away at the sight of them,” one observer wrote. “This is bad for the horse and worse for the pilot of the camel if the owners of the horses should have his pistol with him.”