JEFF DAVIS LEGACY IN BROWNSVILLE INCLUDES ROCK, CAMELS

By Juan Montoya

The rock monument at Washington Park is not the only thing that Jefferson Davis is responsible for  bringing to Brownsville.

Believe it or not, another thing that he is responsible for bringing to the streets of the southernmost city in the United States is camels.

That's right. You read the word correctly. Camels.

Davis, who was trained at West Point, had long advocated the use of camels for the newly-acquired Mexican territory gained by the victory of the United States in the Mexican-American War where he served under Winfield Scott.

Curiously, he had not been the first advocate to bring the animals from the Middle East to the Americas. Since as early as the 1600s the Spaniards had imported them into Cuba and South America for use in transporting ore from the mines to the coast, but this experiment had not been a success.

In 1701 some camels were brought to Virginia, but they faded into history. In Jamaica, the English tried them, but an insect which infested the feet of the black slaves got into the feet of the camels, rendering them unserviceable.

Even before the territorial expansion resulting from the Mexican-American War of the late forties, there were serious difficulties of communication and of transportation on the far western frontiers of the Spanish empire. It had been a difficult task to administer government on the outer frontier and after the Mexican war the troubles were multiplied.

Huge land areas had been added, the frontier was more than doubled in length and was more exposed and dangerous; much of the unsettled region was mountainous, or was dry and without grass and water for pack animals and cavalry horses.

When president James Buchanan appointed Davis Minister of War in 1853,  he inaugurated an interesting and important experiment for the purpose of determining whether camels could be used for transportation purposes in the United States.

His and other army officers' experiences - especially those of the Quartermaster's Department - during the Mexican war caused them to turn serious attention to the question of transportation. The efficacy of using horses and pack mules was limited on account of the rough or desert character of much of the country.

The camel, Davis argued, could travel faster than a horse and carry heavier loads over rougher ground, could go without water for days at a time and could live upon the poorest forage. It could the extremes of heat and cold in this western region than the horse or mule.

In December, 1854, Davis renewed his request for money to make the experiment. When the army appropriation bill was reported it carried no appropriation for the purchase of camels, but the intervention of  Senator James Shields of Illinois and some western representatives secured the amount of $30,000 for this purpose. The bill became a law on March 3, 1855, and Davis at once proceeded to send for the animals.

In May 1856, the store ship landed the cargo at Powder Point, three miles below Indianola, Texas
the camels were marched by easy stages to San Antonio where they were kept nearly a month and then removed to Val Verde (Green Valley) — a military post sixty miles southwest of San Antonio.Here at Camp Verde, as it was called, the permanent camel post was located.

Davis left the War Department in March, 1857, and the  camels were scattered throughout the country. The U.S. military handlers did not take to them and they were mainly used by the Camel Corps at Camp Verde.

The failure of the camel in the United States was not due to its capability; every test showed it to be a superior transport animal. It was instead the nature of the beasts which led to their demise - they smelled horrible, frightened horses, and were detested by handlers accustomed to the more docile mules.

When the civil war began the government camels were scattered. During the running of the Union blockade of southern ports, someone came up with the idea of using them to haul contraband Confederate cotton from Texas to Matamoros through Brownsville. It hauled more than twice cotton as a mule and covered about twice as much distance in the same time.

Each carried two bales of cotton to Matamoros where it was then unloaded and shipped on to Bagdad. The camel caravans would return to Camp Verde carrying six hundred pounds of salt from El Sal del Rey and Sal Vieja.

But the cantankerous nature of the beast soon caused consternation in the city when two camels wreaked havoc when they terrorized horses and pedestrians on the streets. The city commission then passed an ordinance banning the walking of camels through the city's streets.

Few details are known by local historians about the date the ordinance was passed other than references to the ordinance in journals of the time because city records during the civil war have disappeared. However, enough references exist in the research to confirm that such an ordinance was passed banning them from the city. Articles refer to the ordinance is in Popular Science Feb. 1909, The American Agriculturist, 1866., Popular Mechanics, etc.

Now the only legacy to Davis left in town is the rock in Washington Park.