Antebellum Cattle Herding in the Indian Territory

Abstract

Tr HE cattle-herding tradition of Texas was largely the product of diffusion from the pine barrens of the Lower South before i850.1 The Texas cattle industry has deservedly received credit as the point from which cattle ranching expanded throughout the Great Plains in postbellum times, and a number of excellent histories have been written in this regard.2 However, the underlying assumption of all these works-that the Texan cattle-herding tradition formed a solitary vanguard and potential diffusion hearth on the southern Plains-is erroneous. Virtually overlooked by scholars has been the herding focus of the Five Civilized Tribes, who before the Civil War were in sole political control of the Indian Territory north of the Red River. These domestic Indian nations had taken full advantage of a bounteous natural environment to develop immense cattle herds, and by I860 they were as heavily involved in cattle export to the East as were their American neighbors in Texas. Only the violence of the Civil War, during which the great herds of the Territory were destroyed by marauders from both North and South, prevented the civilized Indians from assuming a place in history equivalent to that of the Texas ranchers. Description of the cattle-herding traditions of the Five Civilized Tribes provides the means of more fully understanding the early status of open-range ranching on the southern Plains.