"When I lay down in R.I. I'd find my head on the tits of some woman in Massachusetts and my feet tickling the legs of another woman in Connecticut. I was just too fenced in." Shanghai Pierce, 19th c. Texas cattle baron.
I know...I should be reviewing my notes on 16th century Italy for the new novel. But as I am preparing my novel Flight of Michael McBride -- set in 19th c Southwest -- for an e-book, I find myself delighting in my old research notes.
Shanghai Pierce was one of those big powerhouses of the cattle industry -- cranky, crude, and incredibly hard working (as a young man new to the west, he earned 50 cents a day breaking horses.) His true name Abel Head Pierce was strangely prophetic as he was very successful, especially for a Yankee late-comer, new to Texas and cattle. There are a couple of theories as to how he got his name "Shanghai": one suggests it was from the elaborate spurs he wore that resembled a "shanghai rooster" (or at least what folks imagined a shanghai rooster looked like) but American folklorist J. Frank Dobie said it was because of Pierce's resemblance to the banty rooster -- "long legged and short panted."
"When a man owns a dog, there is no use for him to do the barking." Though according to his biographer, Chris Emmett, I'd say Pierce barked plenty in his day: "He was always bragging and didn't have a thing brag about except money. He talked big but was easily tamed. He was rough even for his time, rough in ways, rough on people he rode over, and rougher in language. The day his daughter married he said "'The feller's going to slide his pecker into a gold mine tonight.'" Still, he was admired by the cowboys as J.D. Houston recollects: "Mr. Pierce was a loud talker, and no man who ever saw him or heard him talk, ever forgot his voice or appearance. He was a money maker, empire builder, and a wonder to his friends and I believe to himself."
Pierce's life is fascinating -- and while typical of the intensity of successful men of the Southwest in the late 1800s, almost impossible to find his type nowadays.
