Jesse Chisholm was part-Scottish, part-Cherokee. A trader, interpreter, guide, businessman and, occasionally, finder of lost or kidnapped children, he had already traveled the trail numerous times, hauling freight from Kansas to stock his trading post -- or rather, trading posts. I've heard it said he was among the first to create a chain of convenience stores.

James R. Mead also had a couple of trading posts along Chisholm's trail, Wayne Gard says in The Chisholm Trail.

Some historians note with misplaced irony that Jesse Chisholm never drove cattle on the trail that bears his name. Imagine! To have a cattle trail named after you -- the most famous cattle trail on the planet -- and never to have driven cattle on it!

Yet Gard tells us that Chisholm, in April 1866, "returned to Kansas (from his trading post on the North Canadian River), bringing buffalo robes, furs and 250 head of cattle."

And Harry Sinclair Drago, in his book Wild, Woolly & Wicked argues further: "In his bartering with the Indians he was principally interested in securing furs and buffalo robes. That he had to accept some cattle for his goods can be taken for granted. ... When he had gathered a herd of several hundred head, he drove them to Fort Gibson ... In proof of this is the map of 1876, issued by the Department of the Interior General Land Office, which shows a trail coming in from Fort Gibson to the southeast, and intersecting his wagon road at the Cimarron River. The map designates it at Chisholm's Cattle Trail."

Yet here is a point of confusion. This "Chisholm's Cattle Trail" is not the same one of legend. Drago continues: "It was no part of the trail used by the big herds of Texas Longhorns, on their way north ..."

So what's the story here?

There's trails, and then there's trails. The Chisholm Trail we barely remember -- and have begun once again to celebrate -- stems from Jesse Chisholm's original freight trail. Odds are he did drive cattle along it, but only on a small scale. There were the oxen that pulled his wagons, and the odd cow or steer or bull -- or herd of them -- that came into his possession.

Jesse Chisholm died on March 4, 1868, barely a year after the cattle herds from Texas began to use his wagon trail from the North Canadian River to Wichita, Kansas. Only a few herds followed the trail while he was alive; his stores probably sold provisions to the cattlemen on their way north.

Over the years the trail was known by numerous names. A commemorative sign in Bowie, Texas, says it was also called "McCoy Trail," "Kansas Trail," "Texas Trail," "Great Texas Trail," and just plain "The Cattle Trail." The sign adds, in parentheses: "(a few other names are unprintable)".

More and more people called it Chisholm's Trail, not just for the original freight trail, but for the entire length of the trail. In Kansas it split off through the years, traveling first to Abilene, then shifting variously to Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City and Caldwell. Other communities also served as destinations, but never to the extent experienced by these five cattle trading centers.

In the various territories that eventually became the state of Oklahoma (in 1907), the cattle followed one main route between the Red River and the Kansas state line. The route split at the Silver City crossing on the South Canadian River. The west branch, primarily used by stagecoach and freight wagons, ran through Fort Reno. The east branch curved through the Unassigned Lands and the current city of Yukon. The two branches came back together after crossing the Cimarron River, at or near the present-day town of Dover. From that point the trail was again one route north.

During the two decades of heavy travel, the route had a tendency to wander -- at least, various maps from different time periods don't exactly agree on the path taken. One possible explanation for this is the fact that, during the peak years of use, traffic congestion was horrendous. Each herd grazed its way north; herds that followed had to take a slightly different route to get good grass. At times the "trail" was several miles wide, dotted by herd after herd after herd. Observers standing off to the side could count the herds by the number of dust clouds rising from horizon to horizon.

In Texas, south of the Red River, numerous routes have become known as the Chisholm Trail. I've already covered this elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating. Texas was a huge funnel, gathering in widespread cattle at the southern end and bringing them together at Red River Station to cross over into Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). These trails became known as parts of the Chisholm Trail by association with the route farther north. Each trail has its place in history, but claims that the Chisholm Trail "originated" in San Antonio or Brownsville or Laredo or any of perhaps a hundred or so other communities just won't work.

The Texas trails fed the Chisholm Trail, and later as the Western Cattle Trail developed between Doan's Crossing on the Red River (southeast of Altus) and Dodge City, the Texas trails shifted west to feed it as well. The Goodnight-Loving Trail took the cattle even farther west, before turning them north to supply ranches in Wyoming, Montana and other northern states. But someone else will have to build those trails their own Web pages.