Charles Jesse Jones, more familiarly known as "Buffalo" Jones, was born in Tazewell county, Ill., in 1844. He was the second son of a family of twelve children, and from the time he was strong enough to pick up a bucket of chips at the woodpile until he had attained his majority, it was work, work. His fathenimals and seemed to have a power of subduing fractious beasts to his will.
Naturally he became an expert rider when very young, which served him so admirably on the Great Plains in later life when in pursuit of the buffalo so closely connected with, was a famous hunter, both from love of the sport and from necessity. Mr. Jones attributes a great deal of his own inclinations to his early home experiences. He developed a genius for taming wild a his name.
His early education was very much restricted. The district school was a log building with rough slab benches, and it was his privilege to attend only two or three days a week, or when it was too cold to work. He was twenty-one when he decided to enter the Bloomington university, which he attended for two years. On account of eye trouble he had to give up his school work and decided to go west.
In 1866 he left his old home and started out. He stopped at Troy, Kansas, and for the next five years was engaged in the nursery business at that place. In 1869 he married Miss Martha J. Walton. But Mr. Jones was not contented to remain where the country was all taken up by small farmers. The winter of 1871 he left his home in Troy on horseback to seek a new location where more game and cheaper land could be had. For several weeks he pressed on westward through winter storms until he reached Osborne county, and entered on government land about the center of the county January, 1872. The following April he returned to Troy and was accompanied on his return by his wife and child. This was a severe undertaking for his young wife who had been reared amidst the luxuries of eastern communities; but like all pioneer American women, she cheerfully followed the fortunes of her husband, accepting whatever hardships might befall.
Mr. Jones remained on his land in Osborne county awhile, but did not like farming. He removed to Sterling, Kansas, where he lived until 1879, when he became interested with the Fulton brothers in promoting Garden City. R. J. Churchill has said of C. J. Jones: "Most men went west to grow up with the country; Jones went west to grow the country up; others might take the milk pail and stool and sit down in the middle of the pasture and wait for the cow to come around to be milked; Jones would jam the old cow up in the corner and milk her. With Jones it was always, *What next?' Jones was a born booster; he lived a booster; he died a booster and was buried like a booster, without a stone to mark his grave."
The name C. J. Jones has already been mentioned many times in connection with the development of Southwest Kansas. Aside from his business activities, Mr. Jones was passionately fond of hunting and capturing wild animals, and during the years he lived in Finney county he found time to go on several big hunts, especially on expeditions to capture buffalo calves. He was accompanied on these trips by men who were famous hunters. John H. Carter, Lee Howard, Charles Rude^ J. A. Ricker, Dick Williams, Wm. Terrill, Governor St. John, and on one trip by Emerson Hough. His first buffalo calf hunt was in 1886, and they succeeded in capturing fourteen calves. His second buffalo calf hunt was in May, 1887. On this trip they captured only three calves. On the third trip, extravagant preparations were made for the hunt. His companion was John Biggs, a typical cowboy and a brave hunter. They left in the spring of 1888 and captured thirty-seven buffalo calves, and Mr. Biggs arrived in Garden City July 6, with thirty-two head. The cost of this trip was $1,825.
Mr. Jones had many horses, but his favorites were: Gray Devil, a wild horse; Kentuck, a thoroughbred, and his old buffalo horse, Jubar, which he said never failed him.
In 1891 he sold five pair of buffaloes to C. J. Leland, a wealthy English nobleman, for a great price and delivered the animals to England himself. His daughter, Mrs. Jessie Jones Phillips of Chicago, has supplied a brief sketch of the years of her father's life after he left Garden City: From 1890 until 1893 he lived in Nebraska. When the Cherokee Strip was opened for settlement in 1893 he made the race and staked a claim adjoining Perry, Oklahoma.
In 1897 he was sergeant-of-arms in the Oklahoma legislature at Guthrie.
In June, 1907, he started for the Arctic region to hunt wild animals. He succeeded in capturing five muskoxen calves and started back to the United States. But the Indians or Eskimos cut the calves' throats while Jones was asleep. It was their belief that all game would leave the country if the musk-oxen were taken out alive. Mr. Jones was very much disappointed, but returned with many other fine specimens of animal heads and skins which he donated to public museums.
1898 and 1899, worked on "Buffalo Jones' Forty Years of Adventure", which was then published. 1900-1902, worked on invention for irrigation purposes. 1902-1905, game warden of Yellowstone Park, appointed by President Roosevelt. He accomplished a great deal with wild animals which had become unruly from petting (principally bears); introduced the herd of buffaloes which has greatly increased; exterminated many lions which were jeopardizing the elk and other harmless animals. The buffaloes he drove in on horse back from Utah and other states at great personal discomfort. Wild life increased steadily in the park from this time. 1906, he started a large ranch on government land north of Grand Canyon in Arizona, for the preservation of buffalo and cross-breeding of buffalo and domestic cattle.
1907, started Zane Gray on the road to fame as an author by financing a trip to this region, which Gray made famous.
1908-1909, lectured with motion pictures on his lion hunts in Arizona.
1910, organized an expedition to Africa for the purpose of roping and making motion pictures of all wild animals which Col. Roosevelt had hunted the year before. The expedition was a great success. 1911-12-13, lectured on this African trip; established a sheep ranch in New Mexico for crossing Persian sheep with domestic.
1914, organized second trip to Africa for the purpose of capturing a live gorilla. He was seized with jungle fever, and carried on a stretcher to the last boat which left the French Congo, after war was declared. 1915, lectured and worked on irrigation invention. 1916, developed water elevator in San Antonio, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. Had major operation but seemingly recovered.
1917, stricken in San Antonio, and never recovered full strength. Died October 1, 1919, at the home of his daughter in Topeka, Kansas.
The triumphant days of Mr. Jones in Garden City were clouded by the death of his two sons, one ten and the other thirteen. He had previously lost two little girls at Sterling, Kansas. The daughters of C. J. Jones who are still living are Mrs. Olive Whitmer Heath, psychiatric worker in the Veterans' hospital at Coatsville, Pa., and Mrs. Jessie Jones Phillips of Chicago.
The complete life and works of C. J. Jones are detailed in the following books: "Buffalo Jones' Forty Years of Adventure," compiled by Henry Inman; "Lassoing Wild Animals in Africa," by Guy H. Scull; "The Last of the Plainsmen," by Zane Grey.