Death Valley Days: Camel Train

It is 1847 as Edward Beale (Stanley Lachman) and Kit Carson (William Reynolds) ride through the southwestern deserts.  It is difficult terrain but Beale claims that camels would be ideal.  He intends to lobby Congress to buy some camels from the Middle East.  Back in Washington, he convinces Senator Jefferson Davis (Harry Fleer), who promises to get funding.  Unfortunately, the rest of Congress is unconvinced.  Years pass.  In 1853, Davis is Secretary of War and is able to push funding for a Camel Corps.  Beale hears the good news from David Dixon Porter (Ed Hinton).  Porter explains how he will go to the Middle East to purchase camels and deliver them to Texas.  After that, it will be up to Beale.  Eventually, the camels arrive and Beale uses them on a trek from Texas to California.  He has high hopes but then the Civil War!  The War Department has no use for a camel corps and wants to cut costs on this unneeded program.

This is a fairly accurate retelling of the Camel Corps.  After California was secured a second time during the Mexican American War, Kit Carson and Ed Beale rode east together as shown.  The role of George Crossman as the chief proponent for camels and the man who likely bent Jeff Davis' ear on the subject is given to Ed Beale.  David Porter did sail to the Levant for camels and landed them at Indianola on the Texas coast.  Hadji Ali was the chief cameleer and was called "Hi Jolly," Beale mapped a new route across the southwestern deserts with the aid of camels.  The Camel Corps was disbanded and the camels sold on account of the Civil War.  Overall, good history to be had.

The story is almost a documentary in style.  Both Beale and Mary, his wife, break the fourth wall and narrate on several occasions.  That was very strange for a half-hour show.  Being only half an hour, there is a lot of compression.  The narration is clearly to pack in more information given the time constraints.  Even so, recommended.

Hawmps! (1976)

Lt. Howard Clemmons (James Hampton) is dispatched from Washington DC to test the viability of camels in the American West.  To his great surprise, Sgt. Tibbs (Christopher Connelly) greets him as a hero upon his arrival at Camp Val Verde.  Tibbs was told that his men would be getting 'Arabians.'  Clemmons can't bring himself to explain that it is Arabian camels, not horses.  Unsurprisingly, the men are most disappointed when camels arrive.  With the help of Hi Jolly (Gino Conforti), a Middle Eastern camel expert, the men learn to ride and handle camels.  However, Colonel Hawkins (Denver Pyle) views the experiment as an embarrassment to his command and is determined to see it canceled.  Clemmons suggests a race between his camels and Sgt. Tucker's (Slim Pickens) horse soldiers.  Hawkins accepts and the race is on.  Can the camels outpace the horses in the western deserts?

This family comedy western is confused on the history.  It proposes that the action takes place during the Presidency of Millard Filmore (1850-53), when Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War (1853-1857), and Abraham Lincoln was just a Congressman (1847-1849).  In fact, the first batch of camels arrived in Texas in May 1856.  Hi Jolly - an Americanized Hadji Ali - was the chief cameleer and is the only historical figure to be included in the movie.  As for the race, there was in fact a test in which a team 18 mules with wagons and a team of 6 camels were sent to deliver supplies.  The camels easily outperformed the mules by a factor of 2.

The movie is very campy and family friendly.  I recall seeing it as a kid and enjoying it.  It is far less enjoyable now, having scantly any story and mostly just a series of excuses for slapstick humor.  Mediocre.  Skip.

The US Camel Corps

During the Second Seminole War (1835-42), George Crossman was a quartermaster for the US Army.  Moving supplies in the hot and inhospitable everglades, Crossman proposed the use of camels to transport cargo.  During the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Crossman was quartermaster for General Taylor in Texas and Northern Mexico.  The difficulty of moving supplies combined with the desert terrain again called up the idea of a camel corps.  Colonel Jefferson Davis of the 1st Mississippi Rifles thought the idea had merit.  When he became Secretary of War under President Pierce (1853-57), he implemented the US Camel Corps.  In May 1856, 34 camels were delivered by the USS Supply to Texas.  More were delivered the following year.  Along with the camels, several cameleers from the Middle East had been hired to take care of the animals and train US soldiers in their use.  Though the camels greatly outperformed mules and horses in the desert terrain of the American Southwest, they were not popular with the troops.  One test saw 6 camels deliver a cargo in 2 and a half days what took 18 mules 5 days to deliver.  That camels could go many days without food or water, didn't need to be shoed, and could carry much more weight made them almost ideal.  That they didn't get along with horses and mules, that the mule lobby didn't want the competition, and that the culture was used to horses and mules pressed against the adoption of camels.  The Civil War interrupted and essentially killed the Camel Corps.  Based in Texas, many of the camels were not used by the Confederacy.  Soon after the Civil War, the camels were sold to private interests - mostly zoos and the like - or freed into the wild.

The book is more a pamphlet.  It is quite brief, covering the highlights of the brief use of camels in the United States.  A good primer for the subject, which may be all one needs for this footnote in American history.