Customer Reviews

The Border & the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains

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Written (dictated to his wife actually) by Mr. Cook in 1907 this book came about due to the author telling his stories and his friends encouraging him to get them in print (one funded the original edition's costs). It tells a little of his Civil War experiences but spends most of the time telling about his buffalo hunting days, mostly down in Texas. I found it to be long winded, sometimes patronizing, but interesting. You will find that he used terms for Blacks, Indians and Mexicans that would get a person in a lot of trouble today but it seems to me that the man generally got along with the races.
The man must've kept some sort of diary the way he recited details 30 years after the fact. I just wish he'd gone into more detail, the numbers/ details quoted do go along with things I've read from other sources. Apparently it wasn't felt necessary to go into fine detail since most readers either had personal experince or knew of those who had but I found myself wanting to know more about weapons, skinning and selling hides and the general details of life as a buffalo hunter.
The book is worth owning if you're interested in the Buffalo hunting period of American History but you'll find yourself wanting more information than is presented here.

This memoir is noted as being probably the most detailed first-hand account of the destruction of the buffalo herds during the 1870s. After serving in the Kansas Infantry during the Civil War, Cook did some ranching in western Kansas, prospected near Santa Fe, and then moved to the Texas panhandle where he got involved in the buffalo trade, first as a skinner and then as a hunter. Most of the book recounts Cook's experiences during this time period, until by 1879 just about the entire buffalo herd that once roamed the southern plains had been wiped out. Much of the difficulties he faced had to do with Indian encounters; the tribes that relied on the buffalo for their existence naturally rebelled against their wanton slaughter and frequently attacked the whites.

It gets depressing after a while reading about Cook's animal killing - bears, wolves, antelope, even an eagle all get gunned down, not to mention all the buffalo: he shot 88 in one day, his record. The authenticity of some of his stories seems doubtful: he relates a long episode involving a friend aiding "the widow of Kit Carson," but Carson outlived his wife by a month. In more than one place he misidentifies the well-known Dick Wooten, who lived in Raton Pass on the Colorado-New Mexico border, as Dick Hooten. Cook wrote the book while living in Oregon a good two decades after the events he describes occurred (he dictated the text to his wife), which might account for some of the inaccuracies. Zane Grey based his THE THUNDERING HERD on it. It's well written, but the main tale being told is not a heroic one.