Before there was the nation, there was the land. And with the land soon came the cattle.
Christopher Columbus, on his second journey from Spain, brought cattle to the New World starting with Hispaniola, now modern-day Haiti. From there, the Spanish livestock were carried to the mainlands of Mexico, Guatemala and eventually the lowlands of Florida and the Carolinas. Meanwhile, 16th century French settlers in the St. Lawrence River introduced cattle in the northern territories, almost around the same time that herds from Mexico were led to southwestern boundaries in 1541.
The new continent flourished with Pilgrims, trade companies, settlers and more cattle from locations of England and France with names that stuck to cattle for centuries. Names such as Brittany, Devon, Angus, Hereford, Normandy and the Isle of Jersey. As the French Spanish confluence stretched from Mobile to New Orleans, a thriving herd in the tens of thousands developed in Louisiana. More cattle arrived from the English in Virginia and Massachusetts, and from the Dutch in the New Netherland lands along the Atlantic Coast.
Soon there would be commodity trade between neighboring colonies, including the exchange of cattle. Without proper fencing, sometimes the cattle just wandered away on their own. By developing feed and grasses, all the colonies from Georgia to New England had thriving cattle.
By the time Thomas Jefferson, joined by Ben Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston – all of them successful cattle producers – worked together to draft the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, Americans were ready to throw off the shackles of a monarch state and build a place hundreds of millions would call home.
The cattle produced in the states proved vital to feeding the patriots during the American Revolution with England. From that fiery start, towns, villages, territories and states expanded with the success of farms and ranches – each equipped with hard-working peoples making them thrive. In the case of cattle livestock, there were the Spanish vaqueros of Texas, the enslaved and free Black Americans in the South, the native indigenous tribes of the West and Midwest, and the countless settled areas of European factions ready to be called Americans.
The 19th century expansion saw cattle ranching boom in cow towns and territories settled by stockmen and cracker cowboys, Mormons and Sooners, aided by railroads and barbed wire. Soon every state, territory and reservation in the mainland had a population raising cattle. The romantic ideal of Westward ranching inspired our history and people. In 1884, a 26-year-old New Yorker gave up his career after his wife died in childbirth on the same day his mother passed. Totally distraught, he left the baby with his sister and went to ranch along the Little Missouri in the Dakotas. Some 16 years later, Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, the first rancher president.
Beef from American cattle has fed soldiers in two world wars, was dropped in the Berlin Airlift, was sold in Ray Kroc’s Illinois McDonald’s franchise that grew to 44,000 restaurants. U.S. cattle beef is utilized in 23 recipes of Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, seven core products of Chef Boyardee and 70,000 pounds of brisket served weekly in New York’s Katz Delicatessen.
As the country we honor turns 250 years this month, historians may say it took more than cattle, land and ranchers to define the United States of America. But it is an unmistakable truth: Those participants were essential to build it. So to you and those who continue the centuries-old tradition, happy Independence Day, and may God preserve you, your ranches, your cattle and the country we love.
