New PDF release: Indians, Cattle, Ships and Oil: The Story of W. M. D. Lee

Indian dealer, rancher, harbor developer, oil impresario—these are the numerous worlds of 1 of the least chronicled yet so much attention-grabbing characters of the yank West. within the early, bustling years of the frontier, a brazen younger guy named William McDole Lee moved from Wisconsin to Kansas after which to Texas to forge a lifestyles for himself. changing into a using entrepreneurial strength in Texas's improvement, Lee quickly garnered the alliances and assets essential to form the monetary destinies of disparate teams in the course of the kingdom. His tale is expertly advised in Donald F. Schofield's Indians, farm animals, Ships, and Oil.

Beginning in 1869 as a dealer to the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and fortress provisioner to troops garrisoned at Camp provide, Indian Territory, Lee won a accomplice and gathered a fortune briefly order from buying and selling buffalo hides and gowns. monstrous herds of buffalo grazing at the southern plains have been killed mostly on his order. whilst buffalo have been now not a ecocnomic commodity, Lee tackled his subsequent challenge—the farm animals trade.

He started with herds branded LR that grazed on pastures close to citadel offer. Then got here his LE herd within the Texas Panhandle. one other partnership, with famous livestock rancher Lucien Scott, ended in the large LS ranch, probably the most winning operations of its day. Lee even brought a brand new breed of livestock, the Aberdeen-Angus, to the western variety. yet as his partnership light, Lee moved directly to his subsequent undertaking—the improvement of Texas' first deep-water harbor.

In 1888, Lee and different financiers publish a million cash to finance a dream: establishing foreign alternate from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the mainland on the mouth of the Brazos River. Their Brazos River Channel and Dock corporation was once to build, personal, and function a deep-water harbor at Velasco, with a railroad hyperlink to Houston. even though threats of economic catastrophe loomed huge, the Velasco facility used to be to welcome, in its day, tugs, barges, and three-masted schooners and to supply impetus for Houston's increase. but with good fortune, the mercurial Lee became to yet one more challenge—oil.

Starting nonetheless one other partnership, Lee dedicated himself to prospecting for oil at the West Columbia Ridge in Brazoria County. Lee and staff struck oil in 1907, constructing one of many first generating wells of Brazoria County, yet insufficient drilling gear hampered additional fruitful exploration. Lee moved his rigs to the famed Spindletop, the place he perfected the means of shallow drilling. even though staggering luck within the oil company eluded him, Lee's accomplishments set him squarely one of the nice marketers of the Texas oil industry.

Lee's exploits led him to roles in probably the most dramatic moments in Texas and the West—Indian uprisings, buffalo hunts, political scandals, cowboy moves and shoot-outs, railroad promotions, oil-well blow-outs and gushers. the folk he encountered are the well-known and notorious of western background: Cheyenne leader Little gown and the outlaw "Hurricane invoice" Martin; Indian Agent John D. Miles and significant common John Pope; outlaws Tom Harris and William Bonney, and Sheriff Pat Garrett. Altogether, Lee's biography vividly indicates one man's manipulation of individuals and occasions throughout the payment of the yank frontier.