La Verendrye, and later Lewis and Clark, had found the Indians using horses in the north.The Indians, as we have seen, had learned to manage the horse.Formerly they had used dogs to drag the travois, but now they used the "elk-dog," as they first called the horse.
In the original cow country, that is, in Mexico and Texas, countless herds of cattle were held in a loose sort of ownership over wide and unknown plains.Like all wild animals in that warm country, they bred in extraordinary numbers.The southern range, indeed, has always been called the breeding range.The cattle had little value.He who wanted beef killed beef.He who wanted leather killed cattle for their hides.But beyond these scant and infrequent uses cattle had no definite value.
The Mexican, however, knew how to handle cows.He could ride a horse, and he could rope cattle and brand them.Most of the cattle of a wide range would go to certain water-holes more or less regularly, where they might be roughly collected or estimated.This coming of the cattle to the watering-places made it unnecessary for owners of cattle to acquire ranch land.It was enough to secure the water-front where the cows must go to drink.
That gave the owner all the title he needed.His right to the increase he could prove by another phenomenon of nature, just as inevitable and invariable as that of thirst.The maternal instinct of a cow and the dependence of the calf upon its mother gave the old rancher of immemorial times sufficient proof of ownership in the increase of his herd.The calf would run with its own mother and with no other cow through its first season.So that if an old Mexican ranchero saw a certain number of cows at his watering-places, and with them calves, he knew that all before him were his property--or, at least, he claimed them as such and used them.
Still, this was loose-footed property.It might stray away after all, or it might be driven away.Hence, in some forgotten time, our shrewd Spaniard invented a system of proof of ownership which has always lain at the very bottom of the organized cow industry;he invented the method of branding.This meant his sign, his name, his trade-mark, his proof of ownership.The animal could not shake it off.It would not burn off in the sun or wash off in the rain.It went with the animal and could not be eradicated from the animal's hide.Wherever the bearer was seen, the brand upon its hide provided certain identification of the owner.
Now, all these basic ideas of the cow industry were old on the lower range in Texas when our white men first drifted thither.
The cattle industry, although in its infancy, and although supposed to have no great future, was developed long before Texas became a republic.It never, indeed, changed very much from that time until the end of its own career.
One great principle was accepted religiously even in those early and crude days.A man's cow was HIS cow.A man's brand was HISbrand.There must be no interference with his ownership.Hence certain other phases of the industry followed inevitably.These cattle, these calves, each branded by the iron of the owner, in spite of all precautions, began to mingle as settlers became more numerous; hence came the idea of the round-up.The country was warm and lazy.If a hundred or a thousand cows were not collected, very well.If a calf were separated from its mother, very well.The old ranchers never quarreled among themselves.
