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There are old recipes from the Chili Queens in San Antonio.

Don't think there are any recorded recipes from the cowboys herding cattle on the trail back in the day.  We have a good idea that they used pretty much just meat and dried chiles, things like fresh tomato or fresh peppers weren't available.

Dried beans were of course available, some assert they were made alongside but not in the chili itself.  No real way to know.  But the fact that once the dish made it to restaurants/food stands in the city and the recorded recipes don't include beans, might be an indicator that beans weren't cooked in the chili on the trail, either.

I like "one pot cooking" myself for obvious reasons.  "On the trail", it would make even more sense, maybe they also baked corn bread or something.  If they had beans, my GUESS is they threw it all into the one pot.  It's basically a stew, usually using tough meat cooked to where it's more edible.

My guess is they didn't, because the oldest original recipes that must have evolved from the trail chili, don't have beans in them.  Why would a restaurant/food stand remove beans, a cheap filler ingredient that could easily stretch the chili and provide a larger profit margin, if they were actually part of the original recipe?

I imagine there were times on the trail when they had beans and no meat at all.  In those cases, I'd assume that just the beans were made.  When they had meat,  chili was made and perhaps beans were made as well.

Keep a lookout for the bean dip.

found some great Rueben wrap appetizers and chislic at an Irish Pub

beans of course are mostly inexpensive filler, probably added by poor folks to stretch the meal to a few more hungry mouths
Perhaps during the great depression

not part of the original recipe

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