| By Michael
Casey
Longhorn cattle, which, I submit, were identical to those
cattle which are today known as "Texas Longhorns" (see footnote), have
played a colorful role in the history of California from the earliest
days of Spanish settlement. They were the State's first economically
viable trading "product" and, in that respect, enjoyed a very
important place in the economic development not only of this State but
of the boot and shoe industries in New England as well. Yet, somehow
their role seems to have slipped through the cracks of history, and
they remain forgotten heros of our State's past.
For the origins of Longhorn cattle in this state, one must look to the
Spanish missionaries and explorers of the 18th century. Although Spanish
explorers and their cattle had been present in Mexico since the early
part of the sixteenth century, efforts to explore California had been
thwarted consistently until 1769. Ever since the mid 1600s (and to some
extent before that as well) voyages by ship along the coast had succeeded
in whetting the appetites of the Spaniards; however, numerous overland
attempts at exploration had been rebuffed both due to savage indian
opposition and, more significantly, due to the natural barriers of the
deserts which cross lower California all the way from the coast to the
Colorado River. Then, in 1769, an expedition, led by Gaspar de Portola
and Father Junipero Serra, achieved the breakthrough and arrived in
San Diego in "Alta California" on July 1, 1769. They thereafter
continued north, discovering Monterey and, ultimately, San Francisco
Bay as well. That expedition, staffed primarily by soldiers and clergy,
also brought with it "several hundred head of cattle...both to
augment the food supply and to furnish breeding stock for the proposed
missions and settlements in Alta California."1
Those horned Spanish cattle which accompanied Portola and Father Serra
were, it is believed, the first cattle to arrive in what is now the
State of California.
Over the next five years an overland supply route was created, and,
in 1775, Juan Bautista de Anza led the first group of colonists from
Sonora, Mexico, a group of 240 hardy souls, accompanied by many horses
and cattle, who ultimately made their way to Monterey and to the southern
portion of San Francisco Bay. Typically, those cattle which escaped
slaughter enroute survived at trails end and, along with other cattle
which had accompanied the earlier military and franciscan trips, became
seedstock for future generations of cattle which ultimately roamed semi
wild throughout the State.
The Spanish explorers of the mid and late 18th centuries for the most
part limited their explorations to the coastal regions of the southern
and middle portions of the State. Longhorn cattle, therefore, ended
up mainly populating the coastal Counties from San Diego north to Monterey,
primarily inhabiting the non fenced and vast boundaries of the lands
which the Spanish Crown had provided for the use of the Franciscan missionaries.
They quickly multiplied under the favorable climatic conditions they
found. Thus, whereas in 1774 there were only approximately 350 head
of horned cattle in all of Alta California, by 1800 the missions reported
holdings totalling 153,000 head.2 By
1834 that total had jumped to 396,000 head of longhorn cattle populating
the lands controlled by 21 missions.3
By 1850, it has been estimated that nearly 500,000 Longhorns could be
found in four counties alone (Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and
San Bernardino).4
Early Californians were apparently pastoral by nature. They were far
better at, and more interested in, raising cattle than in cultivating
the land. The former was easy - their cattle pretty much did everything
necessary for their survival and procreation by themselves. To the contrary,
cultivation of the soil would have entailed long days, hard work, and
natural climate cycles which could, in a bad year, wreak havoc on one's
efforts. Furthermore, roundups and slaughterings had an element of danger
about them which appealed to the early Californians' love of sport and
excitement.5 Hence, Californians were
content to see their herds of these semi-wild cattle continue to grow
in numbers and to provide hides, tallow, and beef for purely local consumption.
They initially completely failed to appreciate broader marketing opportunities.
To understand the significance of the role of Longhorn cattle in the
economic development of California, it would be well to read Two
Years Before the Mast, the classic non fictional account by Richard
Henry Dana of his two year stint on a Yankee trading vessel which travelled
up and down the coast of California gathering hides for its owners,
Bryant, Sturgis & Co. in Boston.6
Dana, who had little respect for the early settlers in California, describes
an "idle, thriftless people" who seemed incapable of making
anything for themselves and seemed content to do business with avaricious
ships' captains for nearly everything they required. These Spanish settlers,
who had nothing of value for trading purposes other than the hides of
their longhorned cattle, valued those hides at $2.00 apiece and used
them as currency. The Yankee traders, in turn, would take them in trade
for highly marked up merchandise from the ships' stores, such as food,
tools, linen, jewelry, furniture, clothing, and other goods. A full
shipload was 40,000 hides, and it generally took several years of cruising
the coast for each ship to accumulate that many. Indeed, by the 1830s
and 1840s it was common to see 30 or more Yankee trading ships as well
as whalers anchored in San Francisco bay at any given time.
Thus was born late in the 18th century a modest trading relationship
which spurred greater interest, on the part of the Californians, in
accumulating, branding, and owning these longhorned cattle which were
roaming, often wild, throughout the southern and middle regions of the
State. With the passage of time, the large Hide and Tallow companies,
both in New England and in Britain, came ever more to appreciate the
existence of California's cattle population. In 1821 (the year that
Spain ceded California to Mexico), Bryant, Sturges & Co. established
a permanent agent in the territory to begin the systematic collection
of hides for the New England market. At about that same time, John Begg
& Co., an English house, sent out two agents to undertake the same
business. Within a year, nine Hide and Tallow companies had opened offices
in California, and business began to flourish. For New England, this
new found trading opportunity enabled Connecticut and Massachusetts
to achieve dominance in the boot and shoe industry in the United States,
and it also provided them with a product with which they could begin
to conduct international trade with European nations. It has been said
that, "[th]rough the hide and tallow trade, more than through any
other agency, New England began her expansion to the West Coast."7
During this same period, the Oregon Territory was also beginning to
become populated by American settlers. Recognizing the need in that
territory for a local source of meat, hides, and tallow, in 1837 Ewing
Young led an expedition to California to purchase a number of these
longhorn cattle. The expedition sailed down to San Francisco and then
spread out overland in search of animals to purchase. Ultimately, they
gathered up 729 head of longhorn cattle which, over the next 120 days,
they walked north to Oregon.8 This
cattle drive, incidentally, predated the better known trail drives north
from Texas by over thirty years and may be the first recorded long trail
drive of longhorn cattle to meet the needs of a distant market.
Meanwhile, for Californians, this new trading opportunity also meant
lasting changes. At last there was an outlet for these many thousands
of animals which were rapidly propagating but which had, until the early
1800s, been considered largely worthless. Californians knew how to tan
hides, and the Hide and Tallow Companies had developed sophisticated
vats for rendering fat (be it whale blubber or cattle fat) off shore
on their vessels. However, there was still no known market for the beef
of these cattle. Therefore, typically the animal carcasses, after being
skinned and having the renderable fat removed, were left to rot. Tens
of thousands of tons of beef simply went wasted in this way, much of
it abandoned on beaches near where the longboats had loaded the usable
portions.
During the earlier days of California's hide and tallow trade the cattle
sellers had received, in addition to the basic goods described above,
oriental silks, damask, delicate laces, Spanish embroideries, French
tapestries, silver mounted saddles and ornate riding costumes with silver
buttons, all of which denoted wealth and power.9
Once the Hide and Tallow Companies established business offices, both
the landowners and the newly independent Mexican Government (which had
defeated Spain in 1821 after years of bloody revolution) began demanding
payment in the form of currency which not only created liquidity and
wealth for private individuals, but also created the primary source
of payment of the salaries of Government workers and the Mexican military
garrisons.10
In 1833, Mexico passed the "Secularization Act", a dramatic
piece of legislation which brought the mission era to a quick and dramatic
conclusion and "ushered in the golden age of the ranchos."
That Act, by which the mission lands were taken back from the Franciscans
and made available for large scale grants by the Mexican Government
to private individuals, enabled those settlers fortunate enough to obtain
private grants, to obtain huge holdings of land on which to raise their
cattle. However, boundaries were set haphazardly at best. Indeed, the
officially sanctioned method of setting boundaries was through the use
of 50 yard long "reatas" which were staked at both ends. A
stake would be set at the beginning point, and one of the two vaqueros
responsible for measuring the boundary would then gallop to the end
of the rope and set the far stake. The other vaquero would then pull
the near stake and gallop on until the reata was taught again. The procedure
allowed people to measure many miles of boundaries in a single day,
but they were inexact and best described by the term "mas o menos"
which was always part of the official title description.11
The resultant "boundaries" were then frequently memorialized
by piling loose stones atop one another at corner points, a practice
which obviously lacked any permanence whatsoever. Furthermore, record
keeping was largely non existent, and many of the records that were
created were subsequently lost. This sort of feeble effort at delineating
property lines worked only so long as the landowners had access to the
power of the Government and the Military to protect their claimed rights.
By the time that control of California passed to The United States in
1848, the State's economic prosperity was largely tied to its hide and
tallow export trade. In that year alone the province exported 80,000
hides and 1,500,000 pounds of tallow.12
At that time, however, pressure to contest the titles to these ranchos
was building, first by many Americans who were by then crossing by wagon
train and seeking land to homestead, and later by miners after gold
was discovered. This mounting and chaotic pressure caused Congress to
hastily pass the Land Act in 1851. That Act caused the establishment
of a commission based in San Francisco whose charge was to pass judgment
on all titles held under Spanish or Mexican grants and to require forfeiture
of all such titles which could not be proved within two years. Over
the next five years, the Commission decided over 800 claims involving
over 12,000,000 acres of land. Although over two thirds of the titles
were confirmed, even the successful owners often found much of their
lands eroded or foreclosed because of attorneys fees and the huge costs
of submitting their proofs. Many had to borrow money to cover these
proceedings, and the interest rates, which then ranged from a low of
3% to a high of 10% per month wiped out many legitimate landowners and
reduced them to poverty.
On January 24, 1848 gold was discovered in Northern California. That
created a whole new industry for the north and brought in people by
the tens of thousands literally overnight. This teeming new population
required food as well as clothing. As Northern California became wealthy,
not only from the gold generated in its mines but also from the growth
of supporting industries, the business of raising and selling cattle
began taking a far less important role in their economy. Now, instead,
those in the northern part of the State became consumers of the products
of cattle raised by others. The southern part of the state, which had
found itself cut off from any direct share of this newly discovered
northern wealth, seemed to be the perfect supplier to this new and growing
market. Therefore, the southern counties, and particularly those located
along the coast, became increasingly invested in and dependent on the
cattle business, not only because of its historic trading opportunities
but now suddenly also because of the new markets in the north. To the
newly rich Northern Californians, these southern counties were derisively
referred to as the "cow counties".
Just as in every other section of the State, these southern cattle raising
counties were, at this time, facing the confusion of transition from
Mexican to American control, and many formerly large holdings were being
decimated by title disputes, squatter claims, and mortgage foreclosures.
Still, there remained large landholdings "upon which still roamed
vast herds of long horned, slim bodied cattle."13
For these cattlemen of the south, the demand for beef from the miners
in the north initially provided a new and lucrative market; however,
due to the breakdown of most of the large ranchos, and also because
of the sheer size of the population explosion in northern California,
supplies were simply inadequate to meet demand. Prices escalated through
natural market forces, and suddenly it became profitable for ranchers
as far away as Texas and New Mexico to drive cattle westward to feed
this large new market. Clarence Gordon, in his "Report on Cattle,
Sheep, and Swine", appearing in Volume III of The Tenth Census
of the United States, (1880), estimated that during the decade of the
1850s approximately 100,000 head of cattle were driven west into California.14
On the other hand, J. Frank Dobie, in a footnote appearing at page 363
of his definitive book, The Longhorns, (Little, Brown & Co,
Boston, 1941), noted:
"I have a mass of records on drives before the Civil War that show
a much livelier movement than chroniclers of the cattle trade seem to
have been aware of."15
Whatever the actual numbers were, it seems clear that the beef requirements
of Northern Californians were initially met during the early 1850s not
only by Southern California longhorn ranchers but also by the importation
of large numbers of longhorn cattle from Texas and New Mexico. Those
drives, which were actually longer in distance and required passage
through hostile Indian country, predated the more famous great northern
drives by a decade or more.
In 1856, a severe drought caused the loss of at least 100,000 head of
cattle in Southern California. That calamity was followed by another
drought in 1860, and, finally, by the great disastrous drought of 1864.
In that latter year alone an estimated 50-75% of the entire cattle population
of Los Angeles County died of thirst or starvation. Land values plummeted,
mortgages were foreclosed, and the industry never recovered. After 1864,
most of the remaining ranches were sold into smaller holdings, and landowners
began diversifying out of cattle and into other more profitable and
stable forms of agriculture.
One rancher whose holdings endured and who actually profited by the
drought of 1864 was a man by the name of Henry Miller, a one time butcher
in San Francisco who went on to become probably the largest private
landowner in the State. Although his holdings expanded during the 1860s
and in later decades, (and, indeed, are largely still owned by his descendants
today), he was one of the first, if not the first, rancher in The United
States to bring in Durham and Hereford bulls to breed to his longhorn
cows. Thus, as fascinating a story as his is, it is ultimately a story
which parallels that of the 1880s and 1890s throughout the herds of
Texas and the South where purebred longhorns became nearly extinct due
to the changing demands of the marketplace toward fattier British breeds.
Just as purebred Longhorns largely disappeared from Texas during the
1890s, the same had already begun to happen in California several decades
earlier. Ultimately, however, it cannot be denied that, during their
heyday, the impact these animals had on the growth of trade and prosperity
in this State was a very significant one. Indeed, one might argue that,
had the gold rush never occurred in California (and thereby eclipsed
the role of the Longhorn in the State's prosperity), the California
Longhorn might have been given a far more important place in the history
in the United States.
Footnote:
Descendents of the longhorn cattle which inhabited California
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are, to the best of the
author's knowledge, no longer in existence. While it is known that, for
a time between 1850 and 1853, the California animal was slaughtered in
California alongside longhorns which had been driven from Texas to feed
the burgeoning population of gold miners and others who flocked to this
state during that time period, there is no known account from butchers,
cowboys, or other contemporary sources in which the animals were described
side by side. Nor do the records of Henry Miller (the largest landowner
and cattle rancher in the State during those years, - whose voluminous
records are archived at both the Bancroft Library in Berkeley and the
Huntington Library in Pasadena) shed any light on the subject.
The following information has come to light, thanks to the
painstaking research of Professor Terry Jordan (Professor of History and
Ideas in the Department of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin),
and is based on his 1993 book, North American Cattle Ranching Frontiers.
It points to what appears to the author, to be an inescapable conclusion
that the animals were identical.
A. Ancestors of both the California and Texas variety
of longhorns ultimately trace back to the estuarian marshes of Andalusia
in Southern Spain as well as the more wooded region of Extramadura in
Western Spain. The people who inhabited those regions comprised the largest
block of settlers who came to the new world with Columbus, beginning in
1493. They settled in the four islands comprising the Antilles chain (Hispaniola,
Jamaica, Cuba, and Puerto Rico). Professor Jordan reports that the cattle
those settlers brought with them were allowed to roam freely and became
semi-feral, giving birth to offspring which often displayed spotted and
speckled color patterns typical of feral animals.
B. Beginning in 1519 many of the Antilles settlers
left for the Mexican mainland in search of gold and other rumored treasures.
They took with them their cattle, and those cattle began populating Mexico.
Once there, they accompanied their Spanish owners on a slow northward
migration along both the Pacific and Caribbean coastlines (as well as
the central highlands). Along the eastern coast, the ancestors of "Texas
Longhorns" entered south Texas in the mid 1700s by way of the Nueces Strip
(a region of South Texas lying between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers).
Brought in largely by Spanish missionaries, they quickly populated the
San Antonio River Valley out as far as Goliad on the coast. In 1806 Martin
DeLeon began ranching in the Nueces Strip and ultimately drove his Andalusian
cattle eastward toward New Orleans, adding to his ranchlands along the
coastal plains of Texas beyond the Guadalupe River.
C. Although there was arguably some interbreeding
between British and Andalusian cattle in Florida in the early 1700s, that
appears to have been of little, if any, consequence. The Andalusian cattle
had entered Florida with Spanish explorers eager to push their colonial
boundaries ever northward; however they were routed by British forces
fighting alongside their Creek Indian allies. Those few longhorns that
survived did, undoubtedly, mix to some small extent with British cattle
being driven along the gulf coast by early American settlers, primarily
from South Carolina. However, unlike the Spanish, the Americans who were
moving west along the gulf coast exerted far tighter control over their
cattle, penning them at night, driving them in closely watched herds during
the days, and otherwise limiting much exposure by their cattle to interbreeding
with the feral longhorns. Those settlers were also motivated to minimize
contact between their animals and the wild longhorns since (as documented
by Frank Dobie in his classic work The Longhorns, (at page 32)
longhorns were immune to a disease, variously referred to as "Spanish
Fever", "Texas Fever" and "Cattle Tick Fever." Spread by a tick that longhorns
often carried, this disease was frequently fatal to other cattle which
had not developed an immunity to it. (Please also see the excellent article
by Dwight G. Bennett, DVM, entitled Drving Cattle, and Piroplasmosis (Tick
Fever), published in the February 1999 issue of the Western Horseman.)
Hence, it is likely that whatever interbreeding may have taken place among
those animals was quite minor and of no practical consequence in the makeup
of the breed of animals now known as "Texas Longhorns." That same disease
carrying attribute also made longhorns very unwanted guests around the
cattle which came into Texas from the north and northeast by way of settlers
coming through the Cumberland Gap. Indeed, many those settlers are known
to have developed a policy of shooting longhorns in order to protect their
herds.
D. Further evidence of the absence of any meaningful
dilution in Texas of the pure Andalusian blood strains of the "Texas Longhorn"
is provided by a look at more recent history. Thus, M.P. Wright's "Bow
and Arrow" ranch, which bordered the Nueces River on both sides was started
in the 1870s and is one of the oldest ranches in the country. In an article
published in the Fall, 1977 edition of the Texas Longhorn Journal,
Mr. Wright was acclaimed for his foresight in resisting the strong temptations
of the day to "upbreed the scrub cattle" and for his insistance in preserving
for posterity a herd of purebred longhorn cattle. As every longhorn breeder
is well aware, the "Wright" herd is one of the seven families from which
all purebred Texas Longhorns derive today. That same edition of the Texas
Longhorn Journal contains an article on the Wichita Refuge (another
of the recognized seven families). That article (as well as a later article
appearing in the same magazine in the May/June 1984 edition) reports on
WR's early collection practices, noting that its initial collection efforts
were centered in the Nueces Strip and that they went to Mexico in 1931
and again in 1935 in order to find purebred bulls. Finally, the Yates
ranch (another of the seven families) is located 70 miles from the Mexican
border in Marathon Texas, an area of Southwestern Texas below Ft. Stockton
which is widely considered to have been free from any influence of settlers
importing British breeds of cattle. Its founder, Cap Yates is widely known
for his insistance on breed purity and for his trips to Mexico to find
and buy his cattle.
E. While some of the Andalusian cattle were making
their way north along the eastern seaboard of Mexico, others were finding
their way north along the Pacific. There, the relative isolation of the
coast as well as its favorable climate, combined to create an ideal environment
for cattle raising and hastened their nothward progress. The Church established
an early presence in western Mexico, and, by 1637, the Jesuits had established
missions which had a total population of longhorn cattle in excess of
100,000 living in the region between Sinaloa and Sonora. The settlers
who were recruited by Portola and Anza for the overland expeditions into
Alta California (present day California) in 1769 and 1770 came largely
from Sonora, and the cattle they brought with them, and which came to
form the seedstock for all later longhorns in California, were those same
Andalusian cattle which had come north with Church missionaries along
the Pacific coast a century or so earlier.
The foregoing, while not establishing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, certainly supports the author's hypothesis that the cattle which are today known as "Texas Longhorns" are the same breed of cattle which populated early California and provided that State with its earliest export opportunities.
Endnotes:
1. Cleland, From Wilderness to Empire, A History of California - 1542-1900,
page 60;
2. Mora, Californios, 1949, The Country Press, Garden City,
NY, pages 33 and 34.)
3. Dwinelle, The Colonial History of San Francisco, published
by Towne & Bacon in 1867, page 44)
4. Taylor, Bayard, Eldorado - or Adventures In The Path of Empire,
published in 1949 by Alfred Knopf, New York).
5. Cleland, A History of California - The American Period, published
in 1939 by The McMillan Co. in New York
6. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 1840, (Reprinted by Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. in 1869 as the "New Edition, with Subsequent matter
by the Author").
7. Cleland, A History of California - The American Period, supra
at page 45.
8. Edwards, The Diary of Philip Leget Edwards - The Great Cattle Drive
from California to Oregon in 1837, published in 1932 by Grabhorn Press
in San Francisco.
9. Coolidge, Old California Cowboys, published in 1939 by E.P.
Dation & Co, New York.
10. Cleland, A History of California - The American Period, supra.
11. Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills, 1941, published by
the Henry Huntington Library and Art Gallery, pages 26 and 27.
12. Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills, supra, at page 33
13. Cleland, A History of California - The American Period, supra,
at page 305.
14. Clarence Gordon, "Report on Cattle, Sheep, and Swine",
Volume III of The Tenth Census of the United States, (1880),
15. Dobie, Frank, The Longhorns, (Little, Brown & Co, Boston,
1941)
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