Soon cattlemen discovered that the hardy Texas stock could survive the winters of the northern plains. Attracted by the apparently limitless forage, they began to bring up herds to stock the vast regions where the buffalo had so recently roamed. Introducing pedigreed Hereford bulls, they improved the stock without weakening its resistance to harsh conditions. By 1880 some 4.5 million head had spread across the sea of grass that ran from Kansas to Montana and west to the Rockies.
The prairie grasses offered ranchers a bonanza almost as valuable as the gold mines. Open-range
Ranching required actual ownership of no more than a few acres along some watercourse. In this semiarid region, control of water enabled a rancher to dominate all the surrounding area back to the divide separating his range from the next stream without investing a cent in the purchase of land. His cattle, wandering freely on the public domain, fattened on grass owned by all the people, were to be turned into beefsteak and leather for the profit of the rancher.
Theoretically, anyone could pasture stock on the open range, but without access to water it was impossible to do so. “I have 2 miles of running water,” a cattleman said in testifying before the Public Land
Squeezing the Indians Economically, 1850-1893 The construction of the railroads, the rise of mining and commercial farming, and vast open-range herding all weakened the Indians economically and drove them from their lands.
World History
