Nearly Forgotten Cowboy Emergency Fire Starting Method
This emergency fire starting method uses a few basic resources cowboys had on the trail.
One of the reasons I am so interested in the study of frontier history, is due to my enthusiasm for the outdoors. Like many of you, I most feel myself when I am outside in some quiet place with no name. The quiet rush of the wind, the warmth of the sun on my skin, and the smell of the pines or the sage all seem to cure my ills better than any medicine. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. However, as much as I appreciate nature for its revivifying effects, I also respect the ways it will try to kill you. An unexpected winter storm, a random strike of lightning, or a pleasant-looking, but deadly-poisonous berry, are very real dangers. If you enjoy the outdoors, you take the responsibility upon yourself to watch those dangers, avoid them, and find the fortunes nature offers.
Perhaps the reason some of us are so attached to the outdoors is that people have been living outdoors for a long, long, time. During those many generations, people around the world were confronted with similar challenges. How to stay warm, how to stay fed, and how to stay clothed were just a few concerns. Around the world, different cultures emerged to answer those same fundamental challenges. No culture is static, and over time those methods changed and evolved as people learned, or forgot prior knowledge. The American frontier is a good example of this. Whether the people were Spanish, Native, French, or American, they were all faced with the same challenges. Different groups had access to different technologies and created different answers to the question of how to best live outdoors.
The natural world of today poses many of the same challenges as it did to people of the past. Although we have the technology to overcome many of these challenges, all of that technology can diminish our skills. If you want to read more about this idea, click this link to open another article.
Personally, I find the 19th century American West as a great time to learn about because the people of that period had access to technology, but they still had to develop an actual set of skills within themselves. Today, we are faced with many of the same challenges as people in the past. Because of that fact, we can learn from them and apply their solutions to our own lives. You might be surprised at the “survival tricks” you can learn from reading old journals. Most of the frontiersmen spent more time outdoors than you or I could ever dream of, and they can teach us a thing or two about living outdoors. One trick that I found particularly interesting, is an emergency fire starting method.
If you are reading History of the West with Sam Payne: Trail to Cheyenne, you likely have come to the part of the story where they are having a hard time getting a fire going. J.J. Brooks comes to the rescue and is able to start a blaze despite wet conditions. What I don’t include in the book, is that this trick was actually employed by legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight.
Charles Goodnight gained his icon status in our history because of his exploits as a cattleman. However, it was his time as a Texas Ranger that really tempered him as a young frontiersman. The life of a Texas Ranger was difficult, and they were often reduced to the basics of life. Food, shelter, and security were all part of their daily routine. Rangers also honed many skills of survival including hunting, navigation, and fire starting. In the book Charles Goodnight; Cowman and Plainsman author J. Evetts Haley chronicled a fire starting method Goodnight described as having used. He wrote, “As a last resort the scout rubbed a dampened calico rag through powder, held in the palm of his hand, until it was saturated with half-melted explosive. Then he placed a percussion cap upon one spoke of the rowel of his Mexican spurs, wrapped the powder-laden rag below it, and ‘busted a cap’ with the back of his Bowie knife.”
If you’d like to watch a video demonstration of this, go ahead and watch this video.
Video Coming Soon
One thing I appreciate about this technique is the fact that Goodnight and the Rangers used the simple technology available to them to solve the problem. They didn’t need a bunch of high-dollar gear. They already had cloth, powder, and caps. All they did was combine them in a way that could produce fire when they needed it. That sort of pragmatic way of living is the sort of thing that kept them alive.
Hopefully, this article has helped you better understand the events in Trail to Cheyenne, as well as better understand the lives of frontiersmen. They often lived a hand-to-mouth existence and their lives were difficult. As much as the world has changed, if you enjoy spending time outdoors, you’ll still face some of the same challenges they did. By learning from the past, you may be able to better understand those risks and protect against them. While you may not ever employ this emergency fire starting method, it may put you in the same pragmatic frame of mind. In the end, anyone that enjoys the outdoors needs to be able to overcome some of those same fundamental challenges.
