The Origin of Cowboys in the American West

To talk about cowboys in the western United States, we must first talk about American cows.

Americans are descendants of European immigrants, and American cattle are descendants of Europe. Cows in America were originally brought by Columbus. At that time, he brought Spanish cattle to the West Indies and the coastal areas of Central and South America. 1525, Spanish cattle began to be introduced to the North American continent from the West Indies. 16 1 1 year, the British transported a large number of cattle to James City, Virginia. Since then, British cattle have been widely propagated in the North American continent, and many breeding places have appeared. 1540, Spanish explorer coronado crossed the Atlantic Ocean and searched for the legendary "Seven Treasures City of Seppola" in North America. He also took 500 cows to northern Mexico today and Arizona today. Since then, cattle have been breeding and gradually spread all over northern Mexico and Jalisco. By the beginning of17th century, there were more than 65,438+10,000 cows in Jalisco.

In short, American cattle entered from the east and south and gradually spread all over the country. /kloc-In the early 8th century, cows appeared in Ohio and Kentucky. Kentucky means grassland in Indian, and it is also known as the state of green grass. Illinois, which is adjacent to Kentucky, is called "prairie country" by Indians and is a paradise for cattle. By the middle of the19th century, the technology of taming and raising cattle there was very clever. After the Civil War, cattle moved westward to the vast grassland west of the Mississippi River and became the "cattle kingdom". Spanish cattle imported from southern Mexico also proliferated. In the late19th century, Texas had 50 million cattle, which was the most cattle-raising state in the United States. From 65438 to the 1960s, Texans drove a large number of cattle northward to the railroad side of Kansas and then resold them all over the United States. At that time, there were also special "Niudao" and "Niuzhen", in which "Niudao" was the road for cattle and "Niuzhen" was a stop along the way.

1In the 1960s, just after the American Civil War, the invention of refrigerated train carriages enabled beef to be transported for a long distance and kept fresh. Therefore, the markets of major cities in the eastern United States are open to ranchers in the west, and ranchers immediately expand the scale of herd breeding to meet the growing demand. Cattle raised on pastures in Texas and southwestern States had to be concentrated at the train station in the westernmost part of the United States at that time, namely Abilene, Kansas. From there, cattle are trucked to Chicago, slaughtered, cut and frozen, and then transported to the east. Cattle travel long distances through states and counties. Of course, people need leadership and care for them. Thousands of young people go to the farm in droves to look for jobs. They are farm boys in the Midwest, adventure-seeking Britons, young people in the East who want to be independent from their parents, former mutinous soldiers, a few blacks who used to be slaves, some Indians, and Mexicans from the border. They are the original group source of cowboys in the west. Later called "the hero on horseback".