The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 5, Issue 4, Fall 2016 | Page 32

wild camels on the alkali plains. Guinn wrote on the matter,
All reports agree that the animals have grown white with age.
Their hides have assumed a hard leathery appearance and they
are reported to have hard prong hoofs, unlike the cushioned feet
of the well-kept camel. Whether these are some of the survivors
of the original importation brought into the country nearly fifty
years ago, or whether their descendants are gradually being
evolved to meet the conditions with which they are surrounded,
I do not know. 32
The camel never replaced the horse or mule in the West. However,
technology eventually supplanted the camel movement. The steam engine
ultimately overtook all other forms of transportation. The camel had its fair
chance as a beast of burden. It flourished in every trial, but in the end was
unsuccessful in swaying the people of the West. As historian Frank B. Lammons
put it, “He passed on, and his bones bleached on the desert wastes of Arizona and
in the Bandera Hills. ‘Operation camel’ passed into history because the camel was
a foreigner.” 33
The loss of vital advocates, the outbreak of the Civil War, and the arrival
of new technology ended the Camel Corps test in the United States. In this case,
most American history books completely overlook a successful program because
it never left any permanent effect on the culture. One could speculate about what
could have been as opposed to what actually did transpire. Perhaps if the Army
had brought camels to the United States a decade earlier, they might have caught
on as a popular means of conveyance. However, the camel slumped into the
sandstorm of historical accounts. Much like Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, all that
remains of the American camel in the desert of American history is sand
stretching for miles on end.
Notes
1. Frank B. Lammons, “Operation Camel,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 61, no. 1
(June 1957): 50.
2. Vince Hawkins, “The U.S. Army’s ‘Camel Corps’ Experiment,” On Point 13, no. 1
(2007): 8-16.
3. “American Camel Corps: They Proved Efficient in Arizona Desert but Suffered from
Prejudice,” The Washington Post, June 16, 1912, p. MS2.
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