Audio
Ranching People and Cultures
Transcript
For centuries Spanish ranch hands (vaqueros) roamed North America’s western lands. They honed skills and techniques in horsemanship and raised cattle in vast, arid terrains. Spanish land grants led to many of the West’s first ranches. Spain granted some land to women. Maria Rita Valdez, of Spanish and African descent, owned a 4,500-acre cattle ranch in California. Her ranch, Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, is now the site of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Rodeo Drive is named after it. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole raised cattle in the Indian Territory as early as the 1830s. By 1861 the Cherokee Nation’s herd had grown to 250,000. Their approach of communal land ownership suited open-range grazing. When the last grazing ground opened to white settlement in 1893, tribes lost over 300,000 cattle. Cattle ranching was established in Mexico by the 1860s. Many Mexicans owned ranches, especially in the Southwest and California. Some Mexican ranchers ventured northward into the Plains. Some women found success as cattle ranchers. Widow Margaret Borland took over her husband’s cattle business, grew the herd to 10,000, and became the first woman trail boss. She once drove over 1,000 head up the Chisholm Trail from south Texas to Wichita. As a single woman, cattle rancher Lizzie Johnson registered a brand in her name. In 1879 she and her husband signed a premarital contract that allowed her to keep control of her financial affairs and keep her property separate. By her death her estate was worth almost $250,000. Nearly one in four cowboys were of African descent. Born enslaved in Tennessee around 1854, Nat Love wrote one of the few surviving first-hand accounts by a black cowboy. Cowboy Daniel Webster “80 John” Wallace bought a ranch of about 1,200 acres and 600 cattle. Many born into slavery could find new freedom on the range and experienced less open discrimination. Along with Americans and Europeans of Dutch, English, French, German, Scottish, and other backgrounds, the open range became a colorful landscape of people and cultures connected through cattle ranching.
Description
Many different people and cultures contributed to the Open Range Cattle Era.
Duration
2 minutes, 39 seconds
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