The story goes back to 1836 during the second war against the Seminoles; Amerindian tribes of the Creeks who fled from the Spanish conquerors to Florida. Army officer George Hampden Crosman referred to the role of camels as pack animals that lived a thousand years ago in North Africa and Asia and proposed the idea of making use of them in the sweltering Florida heat. In 1846, at the beginning of the war between Mexico and the United States, George Crosman, became general of the division and at the end of the conflict he decided to convince the senators about the project.
Among these senators Jefferson Davis, also a veteran of the wars between the United States and Mexico, who was later appointed Minister of War in 1853, began to lead an active campaign with members of Congress to raise the funds necessary to import the camels. This campaign was a success and in 1855, Congress dispensed $ 30,000 to purchase these animals for military purposes.
A year later the first camels arrived at the port of Indianola, in Texas and it was from 1857 to 1858 when these animals were deployed for the first time in a one-year expedition to cover 6,500 km with the aim of laying out a track for wagons between New Mexico. and California. True to its reputation, this “noble animal” impressed officers by finding water supply points and crossing streams with ease, and also helped them conduct a survey of the land in Big Bend, the arid region of West Texas. These camels equally proved their excellence against an attack during a desperate charge while crossing a part of the Indian Mojave Territory, but when the Civil War broke out, they were curiously forgotten by the army. These animals were later sold at auctions and distributed among farmers who also used them for different hauling and hauling tasks.
During this time, the Texan herd that contained about eighty animals, fell among the Confederates and landed on the front line one of them Old Douglas, perished during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Others were scattered in the desert and some of them they could still be seen in the southwestern part of the country for a few decades. The last of these survivors was Topsy who died in captivity in 1934, at the Griffith Park Zoo, Los Angeles.
Forrest Johnson’s work, in fact, provided surprising information about the North American origin of this animal, its impressive speed, and also its preference for thorny desert trees over grass. The author also reveals that their padded feet that allowed them to walk through the desert made them truly vulnerable to the rocky vegetation prevalent in the southwestern United States.