"Livestock raising in the West originated on the rancheros of colonial Mexico. The indigenous people of Mexico were tied to a specific estate, called an encomienda. These huge land grants were awarded to the Spanish conquistadores who helped conquer the previous rulers, the Aztecs. The Indians were forced to provide labor to the encomendero, or owner of the land. One economic activity they engaged in was collecting the wild cattle and killing them for their hides and tal-ow. The Spanish landowners refused to perform manual labor, so they forced the Indians living on their encomienda to do it. These cattle herders were called vaqueros.
Although the encomienda system came to an end in the 1660s, livestock raising and the culture surrounding it did not. As Anglo populations increased in northern Mexico (present-day Texas) in the 1830s, they, too, wanted to take advantage of the wild cattle and sell their products to buyers on the coasts. Because they lacked the knowledge to manage large numbers of cattle, they frequently hired vaqueros to do so.
As the railroads reached the interior, the demand for beef increased to the point where moving live cattle to railheads in Kansas and Missouri became too lucrative to ignore. A longhorn might sell for $2 USD in Texas, but it earned $40 USD in Abilene. Increasing populations, advanced food preservation techniques, and urbanization all contributed to the market for cattle. Texas ranchers began paying groups of herders to walk hundreds of cattle along trails through Indian Territory to railroads. These trails, such as the Chisholm and Shawnee Trails, remain famous today…"
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