A long whip: hence the teamster who wields it.
1859. Gentile and Mormon, bull whacker and Pike’s Peaker, all seem to mingle freely.—Alta California, Aug. 17.
1861. Five yoke of oxen is the motive power for each wagon [going to Pike’s Peak], and these are urged forward by a ‘bull-whacker,’ armed with a whip, carrying a lash from six to twelve feet in length, which makes its mark wherever it falls.—Knick. Mag., lviii. 117 (Aug.).
1878. Numbers of white “bull-whackers,” sunburnt, healthy, and jolly, carrying with them constantly their murderous whips, which look as if one heavy stroke with them would flay a cow’s back.—J. H. Beadle, ‘Western Wilds,’ p. 407.
1888. I employed old-time bull-whackers, who had done nothing but scare about buffaloes all their life.—San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 23 (Farmer).
1888. There is no sound like the snap of the lash of a “bull-whacker,” as they are called, and perhaps brighter women than I am might have been taken in by it, and thought it a pistol-shot.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 229.
1890. We employed a Pike county bullwhacker, who agreed to deliver us and our effects in Hangtown for a certain consideration, payment invariably in advance.—Haskins, ‘Argonauts of California,’ p. 52.
