The Trampling Herd: The Story of the Cattle Range in America

Paul I. Wellman

Description

The Trampling Herd is a record of the US cattle industry. From Cortez and the first cattle, on through the days of the Mexican vaquero to the modern cowbody and dude wrangler, Paul Wellman traced the history and personalities of the Western cattle country. He showed the changing West, dating from the barbed wire fences and the sheepmen, the new laws regarding water rights and he brings his tale down to the last ignominy, the dude ranches. Cattle crossed the Rio Grande into what is now the United States as early as 1580, forty years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In this colorful and comprehensive history of the cattle industry in the American West, we reach back to the early sixteenth century, when the first cattle were brought from Spain to Mexico. We then learn about the great cattle drives that began after the Civil War when Texans desperately needed to expand their markets, and about the dramatic changes in the cattle industry that followed. Colorful true characters like the unforgettable Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, and Billy the Kid also all make prominent appearances in this fascinating history.

Sujets

• Agronomie
• Agronomy for Sustainable Development
• Animal Husbandry
• Sciences et techniques
• Technology
• Engineering
• Agriculture

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 10 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644331
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Trampling Herd: The Story of the Cattle Range in America
by Paul I. Wellman

First published in 1939
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE TRAMPLING HERD

The Story of the Cattle Range in America

by Paul I. Wellman

To that scholar and gentleman and high

authority on the history of Western America,

Dr. Frederick C. Narr.

Among the many who have with generosity helped in the collecting of material and the preparation of this book, the author acknowledges an especial indebtedness to W. A. Cochel, notable authority on the cattle industry, and Dr. Frederick C. Narr, able student of Western history, both of whom read critically the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions; also to Kirke Mechem, secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, and Floyd Shoemaker, secretary of the Historical Society of Missouri, for placing the resources of their societies at his disposal; and to The Kansas City Star for the use of its invaluable archives on the cattle country.

FOREWORD

A prime difficulty in any attempt to tell the story of the cattle land of America lies in the inexplicitness of the borders both of territory and of time. Cattle are grown throughout the continent, and men handle them and, sometimes, profit from them. Yet to call Illinois or Virginia cow country would be a manifest ineptitude.

There is, however, a vast and somewhat indefinite area which, almost vaguely, attaches itself to the life and period we know as Western. Western does not apply to California or the Pacific Northwest. It applies to the territory between the Pacific coastal ranges and the general north and south line established by the Missouri River. It includes the whole of the great arid interior basin, the deserts, the plains, the brush country, the plateaus, and the mountains. Pretty well it defines the original habitat of the buffalo, of the prairie dog, of the coyote, of the antelope and of the lobo wolf.

And the Westerner? History indicates that the great population movements on this continent have been from East to West. The gold rush of ‘49 poured across interior America by way of the Santa Fé, Oregon, and Marcy trails. Later came the steady encroachment of settlementworking always from the East, gnawing bit by bit into the open range, eventually lapping over every bit of tillable soil not reserved arbitrarily by the government, and even turning with the plow the thin sod in areas which Nature had held only by a struggle and which, thus unbalanced, became desolate.

On the other hand the population movement which filled the cattle country has been largely neglected by history. It was from the South to the North. Two hun dred years were required by the East-West movement to occupy that part of the continent east of the Mississippi. Fifty years were needed for land emigration to finish preempting all the arable land west of the Mississippi. But it took only one decade and part of another for the cattlemen, streaming northward with their horn-spiked herds, to fill the great interior of the continent. And today the ways of living, the ideas, and even the talk of the range country still are predominantly Southern.

Easterners are apt to look upon the West as raw and new. It may be of value, therefore, to know that there was a lively, well-grown cattle industry in the Southwest long before the white man set his foot on Roanokè Island or Plymouth Rock. Next to war, and possibly to mining, the raising of cattle is the oldest industry of the white man on the North American continent. It began within two years of the start of the conquest of Cortés. It is flourishing today as strongly as ever. It has, in the intervening centuries, contributed possibly the most distinctive customs and mental attitudes of America, and certainly some of the most stirring chapters of its history.

PAUL I. WELLMAN

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI.

SEPTEMBER, 1939.

1

HORNED IMMIGRANTS IN NEW SPAIN

I

The Venture of De Villalobos

In the year of our Lord 1521 and the ninth of the reign of His Most Christian Majesty Charles V, a Spanish ship scudded before the fresh gulf breeze toward the lowlying misty blue cloud which was the coast of Mexico. It was one of the craft which, with increasing regularity, had been plying the Spanish Main between the islands of the Caribbean and the shores of New Spain for two years now · . . ever since Don Hernando Cortés set his iron heel and his still more iron grasp upon that rich land.

Most unfortunate it is that we have no description of this ship, for she was on an errand of destiny. Possibly she was a caravelthat being a common vessel of those waters and timeswith a high narrow poop, a lateen sail abaft and square sails before, the cross of St. James and the striped flag of Spain snapping at the peak, and bulwarks gleaming with brass, for the Spaniard always has been a lover of the ornate, and never more so than in the period of the Great Conquest. Probably the persons who walked her decks differed little from other adventurers who had preceded them and would follow them to those misty shores. More than likely they were of the common ruck of fortune hunters bound for New Spainsoldiers, merchants, slave buyers, impoverished gentlemen, priests and tarry sailors. To all appearances the ship was just another ordinary Spanish craft bound for New Spain; that was all.

But a closer inspection would have revealed below the high poop, in the waist of the vessel, that which would have distinguished her from all her sister craft. Slipping and bracing themselves in their stanchions as the deck reeled with the tossing of the waves, was a little group of calves, their eyes starting in amazement and terror at this strange, shifting world upon which they had to scramble for a footing. The calves were consigned to New Spain. Theirs was a destiny sufficiently high, for they were to be the first of their kind to set cloven hoof on the mainland of the New World; they were to bring to the continent something which would change the course of history and remake the map of Americathe blood strain that produced the longhorn of the West, and through him the cattle country.

It is not known with certainty how many calves were on the ship. One account says sevensix heifers and a young bull. It is, however, known that they were from Santo Domingo and that they were of the Andalusian breed introduced thirty years before into the West Indies by the Spaniards when they began exploiting those lovely islands.

A certain Gregorio de Villalobos was the shipper. Almost as little is known of him as of his cattle. That he was a Spaniard is beyond peradventure, with, as his name indicates, the blood of grandees. Whether he was short or tall, bearded or smooth-shaven, a soldier or a dilettante, we have no manner of discovering. But there is this to say for him: he, first of all his nation, saw the possibilities of a cattle industry in New Spain while every other Spaniard was crazily hunting for Aztec gold.

Two years before, in 1519, Cortés, after marching to Tenochtitlan, the capital of Anáhuac, told the Emperor Moctezuma, “I have a disease of the heart that only gold can cure.” Most Spaniards suffered from the same ailment. It created in them a kind of madness which caused them to perform marvels of courage and cruelty. With the mer est handful of armored swordsmen, Cortés overthrew a civilized native empire which could muster thousands of desperately brave warriors to every man of his. Not entirely by fighting, but in large measure through a superior technique in practical treachery, coupled with brutality so ruthless that it shocked and appalled even his fierce adversaries, the great conquistador achieved this miracle. In it he was aided by the animosities of the Indians toward one another. Throughout the white man’s history on this continent that same deep-seated enmity of tribe for tribe has played inevitably into the invader’s hands.

Cortés found the Aztecs ruling a loose and somewhat rebellious confederation of tribes. About Tenochtitlan, the native capital, were nations never conquered by the Aztecs, and other nations which were unwilling vassals, aching for an opportunity to rise against their lords. For Cortés this was a sending of the saints. He played the Tlaxcalans and other disaffected tribes against the Aztecs. With reckless valor he threw his own steel-clad body and those of his men into the battles. He lied, a smile upon his bearded lips and a hand over his heart, with such smooth appearance of sincerity that the Indian leaders believed himuntil it was too late. And always his seeking, and that of his followers, was gold.

But Gregorio de Villalobos saw in New Spain a different sort of opportunity. He may have been one of many Spaniards who observed the striking ecological similarities between the dry uplan