Texana
Over the Hump
Preacher Howdy Fowler dreamed of crossing the West by camel. Many spine-jarring miles later, his wish has come true.
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Reminiscing on his cowboy days, Fowler readily admits that he was more the heavy than the hero. Back then, all he wanted to do was ride broncs and get drunk. But after a frightening binge that landed him in the hospital, he was led to the Lord by a rodeo evangelist. Since then he has used his wrangling skills in the service of his ministry.
He got the idea for a camel trek about five years ago, when he became fascinated with a group of camels that had recently been brought to New Mexico by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of an experiment to control the creosote bush, mesquite, and tarbush that had flourished in the overgrazed southern part of that state. His interest piqued, Fowler did some research on camels and read about the historic experiments in Texas; he learned that the 25 animals that carried the supplies for Beale and his soldiers had been shipped from the Middle East to Indianola and stabled in Camp Verde, north of San Antonio, before the trip.
Beale, who had never worked with camels, grew to respect and even admire the animals. “They are the most docile, patient, and easily managed creatures in the world and infinitely more workable than mules,” he wrote to Secretary of War John B. Floyd, who had ordered the expedition. After the success of Beale’s trip, Floyd requested a second expedition, led by Lieutenant William Echols, to reconnoiter the part of West Texas between the Rio Grande and the Pecos. Echols, a topographical engineer, also found camels admirably suited to the West Texas terrain and credited them on one occasion with saving lives: The group ran short of water, but the camels were able to travel for more than a week without a drop, leaving the dwindling supply for the men.
Like Beale, Howdy Fowler says he has come to respect his camels, although he has found that Beale overstated some of the animals’ good qualities and downplayed others that were less desirable. Fowler arranged for the use of the camels, which are worth $7,000 each, with Tom Smith, a spry, elderly wild-animal trainer from Kokomo, Indiana, who delivered the camels from his farm in Kokomo to Port Lavaca in a trailer. The Fowlers scrimped and saved for more than two years to raise the money for the trip. Even so, they’ve relied heavily on the kindness of strangers.
When the camels were led out of the trailer, Fowler, who is not a timid man, took a few steps back. The camels, he says, were roaring like lions, they stank, and they were not happy about being cooped up in a trailer. Smith had told Fowler that the animals were “trained,” a statement that Fowler feels was somewhat exaggerated. Smith guaranteed the animals wouldn’t bite, but he would not promise they wouldn’t kick. Kicking, however, proved to be the least of the Fowlers’ problems. A far more obnoxious aspect of the camels’ behavior is their spitting. Actually, they don’t just spit. “They puke,” says Fowler, who discovered that fact the hard way. And while they are well suited to dirt, sand, and even asphalt, they slip and slide in the mud. Fowler and his family made only 6 miles the first day, although they now average 15 to 20 miles. On a few occasions, they have covered as much as 35 miles a day.
Fowler says his experiences on the journey have been mixed, but mostly good. In any case, he’s glad he started in Texas. Residents of Port Lavaca, who watched him learn the peculiar ways of camels in a very short time, have kept track of the expedition’s progress with a weekly dispatch published in the local newspaper, the Port Lavaca Wave. Editor Steve Bales says that Fowler’s project “has created some excitement around here and put us on the map again.”
On the road, the camel caravan inspired double takes not only from people but also from animals. Brahman cattle grazing near the road would take one look, freeze, then head off in the opposite direction. In the town of Marathon, two cowboys riding quarter horses and leading a couple of unbroken horses down Main Street suddenly found themselves with four out-of-control animals in a mini-stampede.
Some of the ranchers the caravan encountered were happy to put up the camels in a corral or pasture for the night. But others, says Fowler, could not have cared less. “They were hardened. We could have been riding gorillas—they look at it as foolishness.”
Fire ants and drunks were the worst pests the Fowler’s found on their journey through Texas, and things could become problematic late at night, when the bars closed. After a glimpse of the camels, says Fowler, “a few people probably went home and swore off drinking.” One night, however, when the caravan was camped near Hindes, a carload of drunks stopped to gawk, and one trigger-happy man aimed a pistol at K.C. “I had to take out my gun,” Fowler recalls, “and level it at the driver. They left, but we stayed awake all night praying they wouldn’t come back.”
In Marfa, by happy coincidence, they ran into San Antonio sculptor Bill Sandidge, who was there working on an adobe construction project. It happened that Sandidge had been dreaming for ten years of reenacting the Beale expedition, and when the Fowlers invited him to join them for part of the journey, he was elated. Sandidge has done a good bit of thinking about camels and their place in history. “There’s a lot of symbolism to the camel,” he says. “It’s not just the Christmas image, the camel is also an environmental animal—it saves water. It’s nature’s masterpiece of conservation.” What’s more, for Sandidge as well as for Fowler, the notion of camels silhouetted against the setting sun of West Texas has come to have a certain rightness to it, especially because the fossilized bone of the camel’s ancestors lie beneath the terrain all across Texas. Giant camels, now extinct, roamed the arid terrain of West Texas long before cowboys, Indians, and mustangs formed our modern iconography of the West. If the experiments of the nineteenth century had turned West Texas into camel country instead of horse country, one of our most cherished symbols would be decidedly different. And who knows what rodeos would be like.
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