Ikard, Bose

Impact on the world

Served as a top cowhand for rancher Charles Goodnight on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, one of the most significant cattle trails of the post-Civil War American West, with Goodnight later saying he trusted Ikard further than any other living man, having entrusted him to carry the outfit's money and supplies through dangerous territory without any written record of the transactions; after Ikard's death, Goodnight personally commissioned and paid for a gravestone honoring him.

Life & background

Born into slavery in Mississippi and brought to Texas as a child, Ikard learned cattle-handling skills on the ranch where he was enslaved before emancipation, then joined Charles Goodnight's crew for the inaugural 1866 cattle drive along what became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail, a grueling and dangerous route stretching from Texas through eastern New Mexico into Colorado and Wyoming. After Goodnight's partner Oliver Loving died from injuries sustained in a Comanche attack along the trail, Ikard remained one of Goodnight's most trusted hands for several more years, frequently entrusted with carrying the outfit's cash and valuables through hostile territory without any ledger or paperwork to verify the amounts, a level of trust Goodnight later described in terms exceeding any other man in his employ. After retiring from trail work around 1869, Ikard settled near Weatherford, Texas, farming and raising a family until his death in 1929; Goodnight personally paid for an inscribed gravestone honoring his former hand's service and character, a rare and significant gesture of public, lasting respect across racial lines in the post-Civil War West.

Sources

1. INSP (Black Cowboys: The Unsung Heroes of the Frontier); Legends of America (Cowboys, Trail Blazers, & Stagecoach Drivers)