Forerunner of the US cattle industry

Originally brought to Mexico by the Spanish Conquistadors and caught up in the settlement of the US, the Texas Longhorn cattle breed made a distinct mark on the land

- Peter Horwood

Also known as the Spanish Longhorn, the large, wide-horned Texas Longhorn breed of cattle was introduced to Mexico by the Spanish Conquistadors in 1521. They were of Andalusian and Moroccan stock and their pedigree was impressive. Pictures painted on the walls of caves by Stone Age humans in northern Spain and southern France around 20 000 years ago clearly show their ancestral lineage.

By 1540, the initial group of calves – six heifers and one young bull – introduced by Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of New Spain (Mexico), had increased to such an extent that herds of cattle were able to accompany the ill-fated Francisco Coronado expedition into the interior.

The slow-moving Longhorns were not easy to control and early on into the expedition, General Coronado at Sinaloa, in northwest Mexico, abandoned an unknown number of cattle to be taken as food for members of the entourage.

Twenty-five years later, Spanish chronicler Francisco de Ibarra discovered thousands of their descendants running wild in the same area. Within a few decades, great ranches were established in the province, which at that time included what is today the US’s state of Texas. One of the ranches possessed so many cattle that it branded 30 000 calves in a year.

It is believed that Cortes was the first to put identifying brands on his cattle – the triple Christian cross with which he marked his stock later led to myriads of recorded cattle brands on the continent.

Over the centuries, Texas became a hotbed of competing clashes between local Indian tribes, the Spanish authorities, the French and the US, culminating in Texas being admitted to the Union as a state on December 29 1845.