Congrats to Paleopoppy for FTF
The livestock industry has undergone many changes in New Mexico since the first horses and sheep were brought into the province by Coronado in 1540. Although some sheep and cattle were introduced into the region by subsequent expeditions, they had disappeared before Juan de Onate came with his four hundred colonists in 1598. With this permanent settlement the livestock industry in what is now the United States may be said to have begun.
Until the rush of cattlemen into the region after the Civil War, sheep dominated the agricultural economy. They fed, clothed, and supported the people and were every man’s stock in trade. Vast herds were owned by a relatively few rich families who were given land grants by Spain. They employed herders in great numbers, sometimes on a wage basis, but more often on a so-called partidario basis, a form of share cropping in the raising of sheep, which is as old as Spanish colonization in New Mexico.
After the close of the Civil War, and before the coming of the railroads into New Mexico, cowmen who were engaged in the raising of livestock in other parts of the West and Southwest were attracted to the immense unoccupied grazing lands of the New Mexican Territory. The only serious threat to the business in those days, as it had been to the Spaniards and Mexicans, was from the hostile Indians. The long drives first to army posts in New Mexico, and later to shipping points on the railroads in Kansas were made at the risk of sudden and massed attacks by the Apache and Comanche. The principal railroad shipping points in the 1870’s were Dodge City, Abilene, and Newton, Kansas, and cattle were driven to these points from the great ranges and ranches in western Texas and New Mexico.