Chisholm, CHIHZ uhm, Trail was a famous route that Texas cowboys used in driving cattle herds north to the railroads in Kansas. In 1866, Jesse Chisholm, a mixed-blood Cherokee Indian trader, drove a wagon through Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to his trading post near Wichita, Kansas. A year later, cattle drivers followed Chisholm's wagon tracks to Abilene, Kansas, and named the trail after him. The trail began about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) south of Abilene, near San Antonio, where herds of longhorn cattle abandoned by Mexican ranchers roamed wild. See Western frontier life in America.