Modern-day people usually don’t know much about oxen, unless they refer to someone as a “big ox,” or being “strong as an ox.” Some might know about Red River oxcarts or maybe Babe the Blue Ox’s statue in Bemidji.
However, oxen were useful for farmers in North Dakota’s early days as draft animals -- pulling stumps, loads of hay, and the heavy work of breaking new farmland with heavy plows. Although oxen were powerful and sure-footed, they were slow when compared to horses.
Nevertheless, new settlers in Dakota often used oxen rather than horses because they were half the price of a good horse. Moreover, oxen were cheaper to feed, eating only grass or hay, while horses also required oats.
Plainly speaking, an ox was a steer, male calves castrated to make them tamer than a bull. Farmers trained young oxen early, just six months old, in order to get them accustomed to the work. This "gentle training" began by fastening two of them together with a small neck-yoke. By pulling a cart, they learned to work as a team. Ox-trainers used a stick to tap an ox on the neck to teach it to turn, along with the voice-commands of “Gee” and “Haw.” “Gee” meant right; “haw” meant left. When the oxen were full grown, a larger and stronger yoke was used, generally made of oak.
Even without reins or mouth-bits, an experienced farmer’s oxen would go forward, or back up, by the farmer’s gestures, or stick-waving, or his well-timed grunt. If those communications failed, a light whip or ox-goad (a club) brought obedience.
If poverty brought tough times, the farmer could survive by fattening oxen into “excellent beef.”
On this date in 1921, the Grand Forks Herald looked back nostalgically upon the decades when faithful oxen had plowed “much of the sod of the Red River Valley.” By the 1920s, horses had made oxen obsolete, being better-suited for all-around farmwork, due to greater speed and the ability to pull newer farm machinery.
Oxen had been turned out to pasture, so to speak, and were rarely seen. Still, there had been a time when oxen “did the heavy pulling of the farm, and did it well,” receiving “no coddling, no currying, and no grain rations.”
Dakota Datebook by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, MSUM History Department
Sources:
“A Yoke of Oxen,” Grand Forks Herald, July 28, 1921, p. 4.
Steven R. Hoffbeck, The Haymakers: A Chronicle of Five Farm Families (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000), p. 37-40.
Paul C. Johnson, Farm Animals in the Making of America (Des Moines, IA: Wallace Homestead Book Company, 1975), p. 62, 63.
Charles W. Dickerman, How to Make the Farm Pay (Philadelphia: Zeigler, McCurdy, 1869), 392.
R.L. Allen, Domestic Animals (New York: Orange Judd, c. 1847), p. 192.
Josiah T. Marshall, The Farmers and Emigrants Hand-Book (Hartford, CT: O.D. Case and Company, 1851), p. 16.
Hiram M. Drache, The Challenge of the Prairie (Fargo, ND: N.D. Institute for Regional Studies, 1970), p. 140.
Ron Olson, interview by author Steve Hoffbeck, Georgetown, MN, July 29, 1997, notes in the author’s possession.
“Training the Ox Team,” Alexandria [MN] Post News, May 13, 1909, p. 4.
Bob Cory, “Tumbling Around These Prairies,” Minot Daily News, November 19, 1977, p. 7.
