Carreta at the Museum of South Texas History

Carreta at the Carreta at the Museum of South Museum of South Texas History Texas History

By Tom Fort, Curator of Exhibits

Mr. and Mrs. Hale Schaleben

The wooden carreta be buey, or oxcart, was offered to the then Hidalgo County Historical Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Hale Schaleben, of Edinburg and the Tres Corrales Ranch, around 1980 or 1981. The Schalebens were long-time supporters of the museum, and most interested in its growth. Hale Schaleben’s parents were early residents of Edinburg. He himself was an attorney as well as a rancher. He kept longhorn cattle on the Tres Corrales. Both Hale and his wife Ray were up in years by 1981. Both have long since passed on.

Around 1981 Ray contacted the museum and asked if the museum wanted an old oxcart that they had at the ranch. Hale had bought it years earlier from an antiques dealer for their grandkids to play on. By around 1980 the kids were growing up, and the Schalebens thought the museum would be a better home for the carreta, since it was sitting outside in the elements.

Museum staff went out to the ranch and looked at the cart and decided that it would be a great object for an exhibit about early ranch life.

Subsequently, Hale and one or more of his ranch hands arrived with a trailer with the carreta parts on it.

To display the oxcart, museum staff modified the Early Ranch Life exhibit area, widening the low platform and re-arranging some of the artifacts to accommodate the cart’s 16foot long tongue or pole. The cart’s “chassis,”with the pole, side frames and their cross-pieces, plus the axle and wheels, was the only original portion when Hale bought it. He had his ranch carpenter make the missing parts – the upright posts and the horizontal rails connecting them. When it was all re-assembled the museum had one of the rarest objects in any Texas or other state’s museums.

How rare? Before 1974, word had gone around the grapevine among borderlands museums that an original Mexican oxcart of the old solid-wheel type was for sale in McAllen, Texas. Evidently quite a few museums were interested. However, by the time another museum had called to inquire, the cart had been sold to a local rancher. Carretas like that simply weren’t available any longer. Their survival rates no doubt were pretty low. Probably most of them were used until they wore out, and finally became firewood after more modern wagons and later trucks became available.

The museum’s carreta is typical of very old oxcarts used in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. The basic form goes back--probably--to Spain of the 16th century and earlier–possibly the Middle Ages. The entire cart is of wood; originally no iron was used. Teamsters could wrap rawhide around the wheel rims to tighten them, and sometimes wrapped rawhide around the axle ends to reinforce them.

The basic chassis consists of a 16-foot long pole or tongue, with slots in the rear half for wooden cross-pieces. The wooden side-rails have corresponding slots and are fitted over the cross-pieces. The side rails also have big notches on the bottom to fit over the axle. The wheels are put onto the axles ends and kept on with iron “linchpins” through slots near the axle ends.

Once the chassis and wheels are together the framework to hold the cargo is set up. The whole cart fits together like a big, heavy wooden puzzle. It has no nails or other fastenings. To move it, one has to dis-assemble it, then put it back together.

The ends of the yoke, or yugo, were lashed to the horns of the oxen, and the center was lashed to the end of the pole, all done with rawhide straps.

In the 1800s oxcarts began to morph into lighter-weight vehicles, with yanqui-style spoked wagon wheels replacing the old solid-wood types. Around the RGV today, some people have examples of the more recent carretas as yard decorations.

The heavy, solid-timber carts like the museum’s were the “big rigs” of their era, from the 1500s until well into the 1800s. They carried goods from central and southern Mexico north to the Rio Grande frontier, helping to supply Escandón’s settlements and ranches. As Spanish and later Mexican settlement moved north of the river the cart trains followed.

Probably they used fording places to cross the Rio Bravo, such as El Cantaro near Roma, when the river was low. Returning south they carried salt (from the salinas), cow-hides, and other local products. The oxcarts tended to move in caravans or “cart trains,”which were easier to defend in case of attack by Indians and renegades. Even so, entire trains of carts could be wiped out and the cargos stolen. The frontier was often a dangerous place.

But the carretas, along with their slow but sturdy oxen and their drivers or carreteros, kept doing their humble yet vital job year after year. Not a spectacular or particularly romantic activity in historical terms, but essential in the growth of this region into today’s crossroads of international trade.