Cowboys and Camels?
Stories of the Old West are replete with tales of the cavalry men and cowboys and their trusty steeds, but camels? Yep, camels. How did the “ships of the deserts of Asia and Africa,” as they are known, come to play a role in Texas history? I had to find out, and the background research for my novel, The Wretched and Undone, led me to a curious and unexpected episode in the story of the American West: the U.S. Army Camel Corps experiment at Camp Verde, Texas.
The 1830s and 40s ushered in a period of westward expansion for the United States, which only intensified with the discovery of gold in California in 1848. Pressure mounted on the government to secure passable routes for humans and animals alike, particularly across the deserts, mountain ranges, and raging rivers of the southwest. So, too, did the need for military support and protection, given the inevitable conflicts that arose with the indigenous people who had already populated those territories for centuries, if not longer. Pack horses and mules struggled over the terrain, had limited load-bearing capacity, and required more frequent watering and feeding than the landscape could provide.
The first mention of camels as a possible solution surfaced from Army Lieutenant George H. Crosman in 1836 in a report to the War Department and Congress, but the idea did not gain any traction. It did, however, catch the attention of then-Senator (and future President of the Confederate States) Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who reintroduced the idea of establishing a camel corps to Congress throughout 1851-52, only to be laughed out of the appropriations committee each time (Shapard, p. 3). When Davis ascended to the post of Secretary of War in 1853, he brought the idea back to Congress and in 1855 finally managed to secure $30,000 for the purchase and importation of camels.
Sailers and Arab camel wranglers loading Bactrian camel onto the USS Supply
Davis appointed Major Henry C. Wayne, an early “camel enthusiast” while serving in the Quartermaster Department in the late 1840s, to lead the acquisition team, and Henry set off on the USS Supply under the command of Lieutenant David Dixon Porter on the first of two purchasing expeditions, their ship “outfitted with special hatches, stable areas, a ‘camel car,’ and hoists and slings to load and transport the animals in relative comfort and safety during their long voyage.” (Hawkins, p. 3) Wayne and Dixon sailed across the Atlantic and around the Mediterranean, stopping in Greece, Turkey, and Egypt to find the perfect sampling of several camel species and handlers to tend to the animals. The first voyage returned to the port of Indianola, Texas, in May 1856, with a second to follow in January 1857. The Supply delivered seventy camels at $250 a piece and six Greek, Turk, and Arab handlers who were promised $50 a month plus food and lodging. Upon disembarking, the camels were sent north to Camp Verde along with their “cameleers” and a small group of translators and cooks. (Al-Ahaari, p. 1).
The grand camel experiment commenced upon the animals’ arrival at the desolate army outpost. The camels’ mettle was tested regarding their combat capabilities to support mounted infantry and artillery units and their transport potential to help supply military outposts being established further west. The camels failed the first test as their lung capacity could not sustain the pace required for battle, but they excelled at transport with the capacity to easily carry 600 pounds or more–twice what a common pack mule could carry–and the ability to travel thirty to forty miles per day. They also required little food or water. The celebrated benefits, however, were quickly outweighed by their pungent smell and disgusting manners.
The camels had three habits to which the men could not reconcile themselves. [They] could be stubborn, and if disciplined for their stubbornness, would often vomit their cuds on the disciplinarian. This and the animals' ability to defecate without any warning whatsoever on anyone standing to their rear quickly overrode whatever loveable and useful qualities they may have possessed. What is more, the shaggy creatures could deliver a vicious bite when annoyed with their keeper. (Shapard, p. 7)
Old Camp Verde Historic Marker, Camp Verde, Texas.
In 1857, there was an outcry by thousands of American citizens, demanding a permanent roadway connecting the eastern territories with the far west, and Congress authorized a survey led by Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a brigadier general in the California militia. (Hawkins, p. 6) Beale immediately hired one of the more famous of the cameleers, Haji Ali, a Turkish-Greek Muslim, and commandeered twenty-five camels from Camp Verde for the trip. Neither Beale nor his men could pronounce Ali’s name, so the wrangler was etched into the history books by the name of “Hi Jolly.” The group’s trek west commenced in June of 1859, eventually ending at Fort Tejon in California sometime in 1860. Soon after, the fort commander put the camel herd under Hi Jolly’s command to carry mail and other supplies back and forth from Fort Tejon to Fort Mohave on the Colorado River.
The outbreak of the Civil War officially put an end to the U.S. Camel Corps experiment. The camels at Camp Verde were deployed as pack animals for the Confederate troops who overtook the outpost in February 1861, transporting goods and mail to and from San Antonio for a few years until they were ultimately auctioned off to ranchers across the Texas Hill Country at the end of the war. Aside from the occasional circus or parade appearance in the early 1900s, the Texas camels soon faded into the dusty pages of history. The camels who traveled further west with the Beale expedition were let loose into the desert. They formed small herds and wandered for generations in the wilderness, the last sighting recorded in West Texas in 1941.
The history of the camels and cameleers of Camp Verde left a lasting impression and inspired not only a key setting in Part One of The Wretched and Undone but also the central characters of Sergeant Kirby and the Arab camel wranglers Khalil and Ahmad, each of whom is central to both the family and the story of the Anderwalds of Bandera County. While the historian in me might leave things there, the writer is drawn to share another quirky legacy of the camels of Camp Verde that did not quite make it to the pages of the novel. As I combed through government reports, newspaper articles, and other contemporary recollections, I stumbled upon the legend of the “Red Ghost,” which has outlived the last historical accounts of the wild camels of the American West. And who can resist another essential pillar of the cowboy canon: a good old-fashioned ghost story–and a camel ghost story, at that?
The “Red Ghost”
The tale of the “Red Ghost” appears to have originated in 1883 when a young pregnant woman living on the remote Arizona frontier was allegedly trampled to death by a demonic beast with long red locks. Strange sightings of the red-haired menace exploded across the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, and these accounts began to pepper the pages of local newspapers and tales around campfires. The Mohave County Miner out of Kingman, Arizona, featured several disturbing reports. In one, a miner told of a snarling “Red Ghost” roaming the Verde River Valley with a human skeleton tied to its hump. Another article recounted a group of terrified miners who stumbled upon the same figure some weeks later and frantically unloaded their pistols in the ghost’s direction. They missed, and the specter bolted, leaving behind “a human skull with a few shreds of flesh and hair still clinging to it.” (Hufford, p. 4)
The dots began to connect when a rancher named Cyrus Hamblin, who’d seen similar animals in a Union Army cavalry regiment during the Civil War, recognized the mysterious figure as that of a camel. Ten years after the trampling of the woman, the infamous demonic dromedary was discovered nibbling turnips in a vegetable garden and put down by a farmer named Mizoo Hastings. When the animal’s carcass was examined, as the story goes, a headless skeleton was found tied to its back. “Some speculated that a thirsty prospector captured him and tied himself onto its back to be able to find water when the camel went for a drink.” The account also posited that “over the years, the stench of a dead rider on [the camel’s] back made it mad and led to its aimless wandering.” (Al-Ahari, p. 3)
While the breath was most certainly gone out of the shallow lungs of the inspiration for this intriguing ghost story, the legend of the “Red Ghost” lives on in cowboy lore to the present day.
About the Author
J. E. Weiner is a writer and novelist based in Northern California. Her debut novel, The Wretched and Undone, a searing Southern Gothic tale set in the Texas Hill Country and inspired by real people and actual events, is forthcoming from History Through Fiction on March 18, 2025. The book manuscript was named a Killer Nashville Top Pick for 2024 and a Claymore Award Finalist for Best Southern Gothic. Weiner’s previous work has appeared in the literary journals Madcap Review, Five Minutes, HerStry, and Chicago Story Press, as well as the recent grit lit anthology Red-Headed Writing (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2024). Weiner is a founding member of the Pacific Coast Writers Collective, and while living and writing in blissful exile on the West Coast, her heart remains bound to her childhood home, the Great State of Texas.
History Through Fiction’s most recent novel…
"A rattlesnake falls from the church rafters, and from there, J. E. Weiner unwinds a scorching Southern gothic tale across the Texas Hill Country in The Wretched and Undone. Her generation-by-generation saga of the Anderwald family across the tumult of the late nineteenth century is told with true authenticity of voice and place. Her characters are so well crafted they crawl off the page. The novel's dark edges are absolutely gripping. A finer piece of historical fiction I cannot recall."
–Adam Van Winkle, editor-in-chief at Cowboy Jamboree Press and author of Dylan Quick is a Dairy Queen Don Quixote
