Ranching Roots
The word ranch is derived from Mexican-Spanish
rancho, which denotes the home (headquarters) of the
ranchero. From the beginning, ranching often included
raising cattle, sheep and goats, and horses. Cattle ranching
has been a major Texas industry for nearly three centuries.
As early as the 1690s, the Spaniards brought in stock with
McDougal Littell
their entradas (entrance to Texas). Ranching dates from
the 1730s when herds were loosed along the San Antonio River to feed missionaries,
soldiers, and civilians in the San Antonio and Goliad areas. Indian raids in South Texas
increased, forcing many rancheros to leave their herds behind and flee to the settlements
for protection. In Mexican Texas,qv land policies were still favorable to ranching.
Individual citizens had access to vast areas of public land for grazing. American colonists
flooding into Texas during the 1830s were primarily farmers and not ranchers, but they
quickly saw the worth of abundant pastures where cattle could increase with little care.
Cattle raising remained a domestic industry during the republic and early statehood.
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/azr2.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
Timeline of Cattle Ranching
Directions: Read the passage titled Ranching Roots. Your task is to create a
timeline of cattle ranching in Texas.
You will need:
Paper
Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
Ranching Roots text card
Celebrating Texas textbook
As a group, create a timeline beginning with the introduction of cattle ranching
in Texas (1690) to present day. Make sure your timeline includes the date and
event. The following example will help you get started.
1690
Spaniards brought
cattle to Texas
Ranching Roots provides the introductory dates for your timelines, while your Celebrating
Texas textbook (p360, 372-375) provides the modern day information.
Cattle Kingdom - 2
Grade 7
Open Range Ranching
In the late 1870s, after the Indian menace ended
in Texas, the cattle industry jumped to fresh land in
the Davis Mountainsqv and the Big Bend, and on the
plains of west Texas. Ranch enterprisers such as
Thomas and Dennis M. O'Connor, Richard King,
Mifflin Kenedy,qv and scores of other pre-Civil War
ranchers operated on their own land from the
beginning. Other cattlemen wisely bought land after
the Civil War. By the 1890s, the XIT Ranchqv was
among the first to use Angus bulls. Contrary to openrange misconceptions, sheep and cattle can be grazed
successfully on the same range. The combination of
cattle, sheep, and goats is not unusual.
Methods of handling cattle, range terminology,
and range practices developed in Texas and spread
with the herds across the western part of the United
States. The Panic of 1873 momentarily crippled the
cattle industry, but beef recovered rapidly and
zoomed into an unexpected boom that peaked ten years later. In the late 1880s, the
change from open range to fenced pastures brought conflict between large and small
ranchers, ranchers and farmers (such as fence cutting), and employers and employees
(cowboys went on strike).
Microsoft Clipart
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/azr2.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
Character Maps of Ranches and Ranchers
Directions: Read the passage titled Open Range Ranching. Your task is to create a character
map for the ranches and ranchers in Texas.
You will need:
Paper, Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
Open Range Ranching text card
Celebrating Texas textbook
As a group, create character maps of the following ranches and ranchers:
… Thomas and Dennis O’Connor
… Richard King (King Ranch)
… Mifflin Kenedy
… XIT Ranch
Open Range Ranching provides the introductory information for your character maps, use your
Celebrating Texas textbook (p372--375) and the internet for additional information.
Cattle Kingdom - 3
Grade 7
Cattle Trails
Cattle drives were the primary method of getting cattle to
market and brought cash revenue to Texas. During the 1840s
and 1850s, a few brave cattlemen drove Texas cattle northward
over the Shawnee Trailqv to Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and
Ohio, where they were sold mostly to farmers who fattened them
for local slaughter markets. During the Civil Warqv some Texans
drove cattle to New Orleans, where they were sold, but, mostly,
animals were left untended at home, where they multiplied. At
the Civil War's end, Texas had between three million and six
million head of cattle, many of them wild, unbranded and worth less than two dollars locally.
However, the same cows were far more valuable in the North, where longhorns sold for at least
forty dollars each.
By 1866, cattlemen Oliver Loving and his partner Charles Goodnight,qqv in search of
possible sales among Rocky Mountain miners, drove a herd of cattle westward through
dangerous Indian country to New Mexico. They sold them at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and
at Denver, thereby beginning the Goodnight-Loving Trail.qv However, the majority of Texas
ranchers drove their cattle to market following the more familiar and safer Shawnee Trail
through Indian Territory either to Kansas or Missouri. Both Kansas and Missouri possessed
railroad facilities for shipment to meatpackers at Chicago. Unfortunately, many drovers
stopped driving cattle northward because farmers were becoming angry by the diseases that the
Texas cattle brought to their areas.
Postwar cattle drives might have ended but Illinois cattle buyer Joseph G. McCoy
established a marketplace away from settled areas. Selecting Abilene, Kansas, McCoy enticed
Kansas Pacific Railroad executives to provide stockyards and packing houses for each carload
of cattle it shipped from Abilene. McCoy advertised his facilities, resulting in Abilene, Kansas,
becoming the principal railhead-market for Texas cattle. The most important cattle path from
Texas to Abilene was the Chisholm Trail.qv By 1873 more than 1.5 million Texas cattle were
driven over it to Abilene, as well as to Wichita and Ellsworth, rival Kansas cattle towns along
the trail.
About 1876, most northern cattle
drives shifted westward from the Texas Road
(or Chisholm Trail) to the Western (Dodge
City) Trail.qv By then, many of the eastern
trail in Texas traversed settled country, and
farmers fiercely objected to cattle being
driven through their fields. Looking for an
alternate route and market, in 1874 contract
drover John Lytle blazed the Western Trail to
Dodge City, but few of his contemporaries
immediately
his path.
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Grade 7
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/ayc1.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
Cattle Drive
A herd delivered by contract drovers typically consisted of as many as 3,000 head and
employed about eleven persons. An estimated two-thirds of these individuals were whites"cowboys" mostly, youths aged twelve to eighteen who were readily available for seasonal work
as "waddies," or trail hands as they were often called. Trail bosses and ramrods-also usually
whites-were somewhat older, often in their twenties. The rest of the crew was made up of
minorities-blacks, Hispanics, or Indians-mature men usually, who often served as cooks and
horse wranglers. A few adventurous young women rode the trail, frequently disguised as boys.
Wages ranged from $25 to $40 a month for waddies, $50 for wranglers, and $75 for cooks and
ramrods, to $100 or more for trail bosses, who often also shared the profits. With chuck and
equipment wagons leading the way toward suitable campsites, followed closely by horse
wranglers and remudas (spare horses), drives were herded by a couple of waddies on "point,"
two or more on "flank," and two or more on "drag," that dusty rear position often reserved for
greenhorns (new hires) used as punishment to enforce discipline. Little of the work was
glamorous. Most days were uneventful; a plodding, leisurely pace of ten to fifteen miles a day
allowed cattle to graze their way to market in about six weeks. Drudgery was occasionally
punctuated with violent weather,
stampedes, dangerous river crossings,
and, rarely, hostile Indians. Even so, few
trail bosses allowed youthful waddies to
carry pistols, which were prone to
discharge and stampede cattle. The guntotin' image of cowboys owes more to
Hollywood than to history.
McDougal Littell
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/ayc1.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
Cattle Kingdom - 5
Grade 7
Texas Cattle Trails
Directions: Read the passage titled Cattle Trails. Your task is to complete a note-taking graphic
organizer and create a map of the significant cattle trails of Texas.
You will need:
Cattle Trails Graphic Organizer
Cattle Trails Outline Map
Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
Cattle Trails text card
Celebrating Texas textbook
Task #1:
As a group, complete the Cattle Trails Graphic Organizer. Be sure to include significant
information about each trail including the following:
… Founder(s) of the trails
… Date the trail began
… Destination of the trail
Task #2:
As a group, create a map of the Texas Cattle Trails. Use the Cattle Trails Outline Map as a
guide. Each map should identify the four cattle trails from the Cattle Trails text card choosing
a different color for each trail. Be sure to include a map key/legend to identify each trail.
Cattle Trails provides the information for your graphic organizers, while your Celebrating
Texas textbook provides a map of the cattle trails..
The Cattle Drive
Directions: Read the passage titled Cattle Drive. Your task is to identify the jobs/responsibilities
of the cowboys on a cattle drive.
You will need:
Cattle Drive Map
Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
Cattle Drive text card
As a group, complete the Cattle Drive Map identifying and writing a brief summary of the
responsibilities for the following jobs:
… Trail Boss
… Chuck Wagon
… Wranglers
… Rustlers
… Point
… Flank
… Drag
… Swing
… Remuda
Cattle Kingdom - 6
Grade 7
Cattle Kingdom - 7
Grade 7
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Chisholm Trail
Shawnee Trail
CATTLE
TRAILS
Directions: Use passages provided to identify the significant
information concerning the following Texas cattle trails.
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Western Trail
Goodnight-Loving Trail
Cattle Kingdom - 8
Grade 7
Cattle Kingdom - 9
Grade 7
The End of the Open Range
Early Anglo-American ranches had a headquarters surrounded by open range. In
the earlier-settled part of Texas, ranchers owned the land, but as the frontier advanced,
stockmen set up quarters without proof of ownership. When the real owner appeared, the
squatter moved farther into the unsettled domain. By the 1870s westward expansion of
the agricultural frontier across the Great Plains had been halted by the lack of adequate
fencing material to protect crops from cattle. Texas substitutes for the stone and wood
fences common in the East included ditches, mud fences, and thorny hedges.
Experiments with varieties of thorn hedges and smooth wire failed to solve the problems
of plains ranchers and farmers, so their features were combined into barbed wire fences.
Before the arrival of barbed wireqv in 1874, few
stockmen acquired land on which to graze cattle.
Their primary need was a favorable site from which to
work cattle and to control the water, which in turn
controlled the range. By the end of the nineteenth
century, he transformation of ranching into a closed
range was practically complete. Open-range drift
http://www.penrodfence.com/Barbed_Wire.jpg
fences were out dated by a complete enclosure of the
qv
ranch holdings. Railroads invaded ranch country, and corporations subdivided their
holdings into smaller pastures for better range utilization, improved livestock
management, and sale.
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/azr2.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
The End of the Open Range
Directions: Read the passage titled The End of Open-Range Ranching. Your task is to compare
and contrast describing the open and closed range.
You will need:
Paper, Colored pencils, markers, or crayons
The End of the Open Range Ranching text card
Celebrating Texas textbook
As a group, create a compare and contrast Foldable on the Open and Closed Range. Be sure
your chart answers the following questions:
… What are the benefits and drawbacks of each?
… Why were cattle brands unreliable identification
on the open range?
… What factors contributed to the end of openrange ranching?
The End of the Open Range Ranching provides the introductory information for your cause and effect
charts, use your Celebrating Texas textbook (p372--375) and for additional information.
Cattle Kingdom - 10
Grade 7
Ranching Today
A modern ranch is a highly developed unit
with miles of fencing, water accessible to grazing land,
permanent corrals, and loading chutes. Corrals have
replaced roundup grounds where cutting gates and 4wheelers are used instead of cutting horses. Loading
chutes and trailer trucks substitute for the dusty trail
to market. Ranching requires smart business
management, a striking
contrast to the 1870s and before, when a "ranch" might be nothing more than a shack as
"headquarters" on the open range. There are Texas ranches devoted exclusively to raising
cattle, sheep, Angora goats, or horses. Texas has long been the top-ranking state in cattle
numbers. On January 1, 1968, according to a United States Department of Agriculture
report, the state reached an all-time high of 10,972,000 head. In 1973, there were
15,350,000 cattle and calves in Texas, with an inventory value of $3.5 billion.
Raising beef-cattle was the most widely distributed livestock
enterprise in Texas. In recent years, Texas beef producers have
adopted modern technology in their operations. They use electric
branding irons and hire "helicopter cowboys" to round up and
drive cattle to corrals. Ranchers employ computers to enhance
management and to obtain information on prices and markets.
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Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/RR/azr2.html (accessed January 14, 2008).
Ranching Today
Directions: Read the passage titled Ranching Today. Your task is to write a brief three
paragraph essay.
You will need:
Paper and pen/pencil
Ranching Today text card
Celebrating Texas textbook
As a group, write a brief three paragraph essay comparing and contrasting ranching from past
to present. Be sure to include the following in your writing:
… How has the role of the “cowboy” changed?
… What types of machines/materials are used in ranching today?
… Use multiple resources to assist you in writing. For example, textbooks, library books,
and internet; see http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ (Be sure to cite your
sources.)
Cattle Kingdom - 11
Grade 7