The Coolidge examiner., 1933-09-29

ness hit upon the unique Idea OF branding a
new notwithstanding classroom building at its
state university with the symbols OF It's greatest
industry. Accordingly Garrison hall at the Uni
versity Of Texas now bears on its walls 80 cat
tie brands which helped make Texas history. AS
preliminary to this idea f. W. Winkler, uni
verslty librarian, examined more than 10000 cat
tie brands which were used at one time or an
other In that state and from this number selected
the 80 which were to be engraved on the white
stone walls OF the new classroom building as
representative of some step in the progress OF
Texas history.
There Is good story connected with every
one Of them but outstanding among them are
the "Austin Spanish brand of Stephen F. Aus
tin, "the Father Of Texas; the Four Skies Of
s. b. Burnett which resulted from his winning n
large ranch in a poker game in which he held
"four cf kind" the d brand of A. H. (Shang-
ha) Pierce, who drove cattle from Matagora
county on the gulf and whose steers were known
from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line as
Shanghai Pierce's sea lions; the NIT brand.
generally known Ten in Texas" of the Capt.
tol Land Syndicate whose holdings covered ten
counties and included three million acres, given
in payment for the state capitol building at Aus
tin, the Lazy S of c. C. Slaughter which adorned
more than u 600 cattle year in the trail-driving
period after the Civil war; the JA brand of
Charles Goodnight owner of the famous Good
night ranch, home of the Goodnight herd of buff
falo, and eXperimenter in crossing cattle and
buffalo to produce the "cataO" and last but not
least the NIX brand of S. A. Maverick the cattle
man who paradoxically became famous not be-
cause Of brand but because of lack of one and
whose name became a common noun in the Amer
lean language. For maverick" is q word found
in all dictionaries, defined by the eminent Die
tionaire Webster as IAN unbranded animal, esp.
motherless calf, formerly customarily claimed
by the first one branding it." and "mavericking"
is a recognized legal term for Illegal appropria-
tion of unbranded cattle
Samuel A. Maverick, a graduate of Yale col
lege in the class of 1925, was one of the foun-
ders Of Texas independence and a member of
the congress of the Republic of Texas in 1S45.
The exact details of how his name came to be
perpetuated in a common Western word are
somewhat disputed One account states that a
neighbor who owed Maverick debt of S400 paid
it off by giving him 200 head of longhorn cat
tie, whereupon Maverick turned them over to
family Of negro slaves with the understanding
they have the natural increase of the herd.
But these negroes were shiftless set and
allowed the cattle that thus came to them to roam
at will in the long grass along Matagorda bay.
In few years there were hundreds of these
unbranded cattle and people often asked "Whose
cattle are these?" to which the usual reply was
They're Mavericks" AS time went on the term
mavericks came to be applied to all unbranded
cattle-they were not Samuel A. Mavericks cat
tie, they were just mavericks, nobody's cattle
Another account says that during the Civil
war nearly all of Colonel Mavericks employees
entered the Confederate army, so that his cat
tie ran wild and remained unbranded SO they
were "Maverick's cattle" until some one else
clapped his brand on them to make them his
L.
ericks." Whatever the true story may have been,
the fact remains that among all cattlemen who
might be famous because thousands of cattle
bore their brands, the most enduring fame came
to one whose cattle went unbranded
&c by Western Newspaper Union)