De return to ancestral home

The story behind the ghost camels 

One of the many legends of the Old West, but by far the most logical, is the one we encounter today, about the ghost camels of the American Southwest.

This legend was about animals similar to camels, reported in the southwestern states of the United States, which were reported as herd animals that inhabited the distant and desolate mountains of those lands, Although it was sometimes said that these animals were a problem for the settlers, because they destroyed fences, wreaked havoc on stagecoaches and attacked stagecoaches, these were rare to see.

This turns out to be a legend with a touch of truth, since there is a little-known but quite strange fact to consider, which not much is taken into account today and could have caused such sightings.

  The U.S. camell corp

    Well, the truth is that, in the first decades of the 19th century, the United States saw new potential in addition to horses and mules, and it was camels as pack animals.

This began in 1836, when Major George H. Crosman suggested that camels would be useful as beasts of burden, encouraging the War Department to use camels for military transportation and in 1848 or earlier, Commander Henry C. Wayne conducted a more detailed study and recommended the importation of camels to the War Department, which was also supported by Jefferson Davis, The idea was abandoned for a time, until it was taken up again in 1853 by President Franklin Pierce, When American forces were required to operate in arid, desert regions, the president and Congress began to take the idea seriously. Davis discovered that the Army needed to improve transportation in the desert southwest of the United States.

Thus, soon camels began to be imported to try to use them in the war area, with 33 animals, 2 Bactrians and 29 dromedaries and one booghde, (hybrid between the previous 2), although at first it seemed like something that would bear fruit, the plan was decayed and abandoned when the civil war broke out, the story is longer but I leave you a link.

The fate of most of these animals was to be auctioned, but a good number of them escaped before the end of the experiment and possibly, something similar happened with the wild horses and donkeys that still exist to this day, thriving for some time in those places until the colonization of the west, The number of these at the end of everything that happened apparently reached over 100, although it could never be determined.

Although perhaps these were able to adapt to the arid environment, apparently they were not as successful as horses or donkeys and ended up extinct in a short time, being abundant in arid Arizona, by no means uncommon, although they have also not been seen since those times, the last sightings being in the 20th century.

This should have ended here, but there is one case worth highlighting, which occurred in Arizona.

The Red Ghost of Arizona

   Another of the many legends of the Wild West, during the final era of the so-called Apache Wars.

It was a strange creature described as an aberrant and deformed red camel, which was extremely savage, to the point that it killed people and some they also attributed him to railway accidents and killing predators such as bears, always described in this way, they also mentioned that he carried a strange and terrifying lump on his back.

This frightened the locals of Eagle Creek for a long time, until finally, one morning, the animal was shot down, and after examining the corpse, it was seen that it was this horrible camelid, but also, a more disturbing detail, were the rawhide strips which, some attached to the skin of the animal, which had a corpse tied.

Where did this animal come from and the reason for such a grotesque scene, It is and has been a great mystery, but it is still present in the cultural memory of those locals, But perhaps this mystery lies in the sightings of one of the last feral camels in America. 

[Reading links]

https://www.americanheritage.com/red-ghost

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuerpo_de_camellos_de_Estados_Unidos