The Early Cattle Years

The cattle industry grew at amazing speed.  For almost 300 years the longhorns, descended from bulls and cows brought to Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors, had multiplied and filled the grasslands of southeastern Texas.  There wasn't much of a market for these early cattle.

By the early 19th century, tens of thousands of longhorns were wild on the Texan plains.  There were no fences, no cattle ranches, no cowboys to manage the great herds.  One observer said they had "ferocious dispositions."  He warned, "A footman is never safe when a herd is in the vicinity."  The longhorn was "fifty times more dangerous than than the fiercest buffalo."

Not until after the Mexican War did the first major cattle drive begin, where ranchers rounded up thousands of cattle from the open range, branded them and herded them northward to the markets of the Midwest or toward the gold camps in the 1850s.  The demand was still too small and too far away to compensate for the costs and hazards faced on the trails getting the cattle to their destination.

For those who made the early Texas beef industry a career, it was a hard and unrewarding life.  Charles Goodnight, one of the great cattle barons, hired out as a cowhand along with his brother in 1857 to watch over 400 head in exchange for 25% of the calves born to that year's herd.  Only 32 calves, worth $96 came from that first year's herd.

The job was dangerous, the longhorns were formidable and easily provoked.  Three-fifths horns and hooves with the rest all red-hair, they were not easy to handle.  The most famous longhorn, Goodnight's "Old Blue" led Goodnight's herd north, always picking the best place for cattle to rest for the night and even calmed the herd during storms. 

Despite the discouraging statistics, a few ranchers and would-be ranchers in those early years, including Charles Goodnight, made up their minds that in spite of it all, they would make it in the cattle ranching business.

Next time...A growing business
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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 11, 1788, Searching for sea otter pelts and other furs, the Russian explorer Gerrasim Grigoriev Izmailov reaches the Alaskan coast, setting his ship in at Yakutat Bay, Alaska.  At Yakutat Bay, Izmailov immediately began a peaceful and successful program of fur trading with the Tlingit Indians. After further exploring the Alaskan coast, Izmailov eventually returned to his homeport of Okhotsk, where he is thought to have died in around 1796. In 1867, Russia sold the region of Alaska to the United States for $7 million.