As Massachusetts celebrates the nation's 250th anniversary, history books often point us toward the big dramatic moments in Boston, but a lot of the heavy work that won the Revolutionary War happened in the mud and snow of Western Massachusetts.
And it wasn't just done by soldiers. In the brutal winter of 1775, when Henry Knox brought tons of captured British artillery across the frozen Berkshire hills and over the frozen Connecticut River, he didn't do it with horses alone. He did it with a steady, unsung backbone of early New England agriculture, the working ox.
For some perspective on the forgotten role of the ox in the founding of America, we're joined by Doctor Drew Conroy. He's a rural historian, a professor of agricultural sciences at the University of New Hampshire, and an ox drover himself.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Drew, we’re staring down the nation's 250th anniversary. But your own path into this world actually started 50 years ago during the A bicentennial. How did you first get into working with oxen?
Andrew Conroy, Ph.D.: I remember it was 1976 [and] our little town had a parade, and I noticed all these people with these oxen, and then I sought them out and they became my first mentors.
Most people picture Revolutionary War soldiers on horseback, but major operations like moving 60 tons of cannons through a brutal winter was actually more suited to oxen, physically and behaviorally. Why would Knox want a team of oxen for hauling heavy artillery through the mud and snow when horses may have been available?
Yeah, so oxen have a definite few advantages when you're comparing them to horses, especially in those kind of conditions. Oxen tend to be slower moving, a little more deliberate. Oxen in difficult conditions, like really deep snow, will just keep trudging forward. And the other thing is, in any kind of muddy situation, their cloven hooves make them much easier to work in mud horses single hoof is like a suction cup if it goes down in the mud.
The other thing is you can yoke up many teams of oxen and it doesn't get more challenging. Horses kind of feed off each other and get a little excited. [But] you can put ten pairs of oxen together and they just trudge along. The addition of the animals needed to pull heavy loads was very easy. Two oxen will follow just as easy as four or six, especially after they've done it a little bit.
250 years ago, long before tractors and machinery reshaped the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires, rural WMass communities relied entirely on animal muscle to carve out a living from the rugged terrain. What did that daily survival look like for a frontier family with an ox?
If someone was moving to an area and it was, you know, basically unsettled and they had to clear the land and so on and so forth, the ox would make a huge difference.
They became an animal that would help you move the logs and clear the forest. Later, pull out the stumps and the stone walls we see throughout much of New England. They weren't built with bulldozers and excavators. They were built by people loading stones on a stone boat pulled by oxen. One pair of oxen could make a really tremendous difference in the lives of people that were just trying to turn a forest into a farm.
The other thing about oxen that makes them easier [than] horses at that stage, is they can rely on feed that horses wouldn't do as well on. You know, a coarser hay. You could basically cut grass from the edge of a swamp and, the oxen would eat it. You could feed them dropped trees and they would eat the leaves off it.
So, horses needed better feed in order to stay in good condition. And oxen with their four stomach compartments, being a ruminant and chewing cud, are really, really easy keepers.
Henry Knox famously planned to gather 80 or more teams of oxen to haul his artillery. But what would it have meant for a local family to have their oxen requisitioned or borrowed for a military march during winter?
The small farmer that's got 1 or 2 teams of oxen. It would have been. It was, what, December that Knox made that famous trip and hoped to have those oxen.
It was a really, really cruel winter that year too.
Yeah. So, in the winter oxen would have been probably less busy. But I think a little less critical in my mind than maybe spring of the year when they had to plow the land.
Over the last two and a half centuries, tractors have virtually entirely replaced animal power, shifting the ox from a necessity to a heritage tradition. If you watch a traditional ox demonstration at a local fair, it can look like the animals are just relying on brute strength. What are the subtle cues or details that a casual observer might miss that show the intelligence and precision of a well-trained team?
Well, even before they go into - whether it be a cart class, or a show, or a pulling contest - before the animals even come in, first of all, the teamsters are often sitting in lawn chairs in front of their animals, and they're not tied up. There's no halter, there's no rope on them. The animals are standing there in the yoke!
Think about horses, you know, whether any kind of horse competition [you never] take the bridle off the horses. It's very rare. So [with] cattle, the communication is really evident when you just see them waiting. There's no physical connection to the person. But as soon as the person stands up and grabs their stick, the oxen know, [and think] 'okay, time to go to work.'
Drew Conroy is a professor of applied animal science at the University of New Hampshire.
For the rest of us, when you visit a local county fair this summer, grab some fried dough and make sure to head past the midway to the cattle barns. When you see the local farmers standing with those working oxen, take a moment and think about the massive, steady power that quite literally carried the weight of the American Revolution.