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The early roots of Texas ranching began with colonial conquest. In , Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to the island of Hispaniola. He brought with him the first Spanish cattle and the precursors of the famed Texas longhorn.
Through the 16th and 17th centuries, cattle ranching continued to spread north through Spanish Mexico and into the land now known as Texas. The first cattle raising in Texas appeared in the Rio Grande Valley. By , there were several thousand cattle recorded in the El Paso region. The earliest ranches were those of Spanish missionaries. By the midth century, these were joined by competing private ranches. V aqueros were the first cowhands on these early ranches.
Most vaqueros were from lower castas — socio-racial classes used by the Spanish government — like mestizo of American Indian and Spanish ancestry , mulatto of Spanish and African ancestry , American Indian, or African. They worked as independent contractors, owning their own horses, saddles, and ropes but remaining unbound to a hacienda or a patron unless they chose to be.
The Spanish crown saw an opportunity in the growing number of cattle in the region. In , the crown imposed the contentious Fondo de Mestenos Mustang Tax on all unbranded cattle and horses. Cattle drives out of Texas also began at this time, mostly to provide military rations of beef. Written records from suggest that cattle were driven to Louisiana to feed Spanish soldiers fighting against the British in the American Revolution.
The arrival of the cattle remains unconfirmed, but it would have been the first-ever drive out of Texas. The Mustang Tax was revoked in , and drives spread more rapidly to new markets. As a result, there was a major decline in cattle by the turn of the century. This was made worse by the turmoil of the Mexican War of Independence beginning in By the end of the war in , the Spanish ranching economy had effectively dissolved.
Over time, their eastern cattle bred with Spanish cattle and the Texas Longhorn was born. By the s, settlers had blended eastern ranching techniques with those of their Spanish-Mexican predecessors. Cattle and beef were abundant in the Colony. Over the next decade, the upheaval of the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War left large quantities of land and cattle abandoned by Mexican ranchers. American settlers began to spread into arid northern and western Texas, and the longhorn went with them.
When the United States annexed Texas in , it distributed public lands for railroads and settlement. This expanded new markets for Texas cattle. Land was abundant and economic demand was growing. Ranching required open ranges, periodic roundups and cattle branding, and management of cattle on horseback. Cowhands lived meagerly, splitting their time on the range and in small line shacks at the ranch.
Over-land drives were most important of all. They were essential to moving large herds to markets across the South. The Texas longhorn was uniquely suited to this style of ranching.
Lean and sturdy, it was self-sufficient on the range and could withstand long, hard drives. The domestic cattle economy was growing, too. With the expansion of railways in other parts of the country, cattle were gradually driven west to gold fields in California.
Drives also went north to Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, where beef was packed and distributed to northeastern urban markets. The Shawnee Trail was essential to this first push north.
The trail had been used for drives as early as the s and followed routes established by American Indians, traders, missionaries, military, and pioneer settlers for years. The trail passed from Austin through Waco and Dallas and north to St. Louis and other Missouri cities. The s saw an outbreak of Spanish Fever, a deadly and highly contagious disease spread among cattle by ticks.
Use of the Shawnee Trail slowly declined as a result of fears of the disease and because civil war the following decade. By the start of the Civil War in , the United States had developed a national demand for beef. The country looked to Texas ranches to provide.
During the war, a federal blockade of the Mississippi River closed access to longtime cattle markets in New Orleans. The war also devastated much of the South and its local markets. These factors led to an overabundance of cattle in Texas.
At the same time, there was a surge in demand from northern cities. By the end of the war, a Texas steer bought for six to ten dollars could be sold for thirty to forty dollars in the northeast.
The golden age of the Texas longhorn had arrived. Concerns over Spanish Fever persisted in the North, prompting the enactment of cattle quarantines by Missouri and Kansas. Still, national demand was high and northern markets were lucrative. In , Illinois businessman Joseph G. Scot-Cherokee trader Jesse Chisholm had used this route since to transport goods from Wichita to Indian camps across the Southern Plains.
The route eventually came to be known as the Chisholm Trail. The Chisholm Trail was critical in bringing Texas cattle to markets in the North by ; there were nearly 15 million beef cattle nationwide. Conditions on cattle trails were unpredictable and treacherous. Dangers included harsh weather, cattle thieves, difficult river crossings, stampedes, and conflicts with American Indians. Language English.
The hidden costs of burgers. Habitat conversion, commonly referred to as deforestation, lies at the crux of what is shaping the future of the Amazon Biome. Alone, the deforestation caused by cattle ranching is responsible for the release of million tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year, equivalent to 3.
Beyond forest conversion, cattle pastures increase the risk of fire and are a significant degrader of riparian and aquatic ecosystems, causing soil erosion, river siltation and contamination with organic matter. Trends indicate that livestock production is expanding in the Amazon. While grazing densities vary among livestock production systems and countries, extensive, low productivity, systems with less thanone animal unit per hectare of pasture are the dominant form of cattle ranching in the Amazon.
Cattle in the Amazon Number of heads of cattle in the states of the Brazilian Amazon and the departments of the Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon.
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