Abstract
Livestock have been portrayed as a bane on the landscape of Latin America, often without fair and unbiased assessment. Here, two articles by William M. Denevan, one on cattle in Bolivia and one on sheep in New Mexico, are discussed. The findings demonstrate how objective scholarship provides more light than heat on a subject that is often contentious because it is misunderstood.
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Notes
- 1.
The Archivo de Mojos, Vol. 9, No. 43 (Biblioteca Nacional, Sucre) contains a 1786 circular prohibiting the killing of cattle or sale of horses “in order that they might multiply for the benefit of the province.”
- 2.
Col. P.H. Fawcett (1952, 235), the British explorer, commented in 1913 that “We were warned of the wild bulls, which had killed many foot travelers.”
- 3.
In 1946 the Bolivian Development Corporation began flying small amounts of beef from their ranch at Reyes to La Paz (Macaulay 1946).
- 4.
Roads are planned which will eventually connect (1) Cochabamba with Puerto Villarroel on the Río Ichilo, the most navigable of the upper tributaries of the Río Mamoré; and (2) either Reyes or San Borja in the southwestern llanos with La Paz via the Alto Beni region.
- 5.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the late Erhard Rostlund, in whose last seminar this study was first begun, and to Yi-Fu Tuan, Andrew H. Clark, James J. Parsons, and Ernst Antevs who made valuable comments on various drafts of the paper.
- 6.
For a discussion of these two models and for references, see Tuan (1966, 583–584, footnote 2).
- 7.
Gordon (1883, 994) For 1880, 3,938,831 sheep and only 347,936 cattle were reported (includes entire Navaho Reservation stock); horses and mules were not reported.
- 8.
Dellenbaugh (1912), Gregory (1917, 132), and Peterson (1950, 421). Of interest would be a comparison of the history of erosion on the overgrazed and seriously eroded Navajo Reservation with that of the Apache Reservations where sheep and goat raising have not been important but climate generally has been comparable.
- 9.
The United States Department of Agriculture in 1937 reported that 75 percent of the drainage basin of the upper Rio Grande in New Mexico had experienced moderate to advanced accelerated erosion, and that “every large and practically every small valley of the watershed has been channeled from 50 to 100 percent of its length” by vertical-walled arroyos as much as 300 ft. wide and 30 or more ft. deep. See Cooperrider and Hendricks (1937, 2, 11–12).
- 10.
Following the usage by Antevs, the words “arroyo” and “gully” are used here as geomorphic terms for wide, flat-floored and deep, vertical-walled channels, old as well as modern, in the southwestern United States. Desert washes, which are also flat floored and steep walled, differ from arroyos by being eroded mainly in gravel and independently of vegetation condition (Antevs 1952, 375).
- 11.
Leopold cited early travelers who reported gullies elsewhere in New Mexico and Arizona, but the descriptions are vague as to the size and nature of the gullies. Many, especially in New Mexico, apparently were desert washes rather than true arroyos (Leopold 1951a). For a description and history of the Rio Puerco Valley see Widdison (1959).
- 12.
For a good description of the Mexican irrigation systems in New Mexico see Davis (1857, 195–200).
- 13.
Large sheep haciendas around Tucson and Tubac, broken up by Apaches in the 1830s, were mentioned by Haskett (1936, 9). The Navahos were reported to have had 500,000 head of sheep in 1846, mainly in large herds, according to Luomala (1938, 56); based on an Indian Bureau Report. There were 30,000 sheep in the Hopi pueblos as early as 1779, according to Father Escalante as reported by Towne and Wentworth (1945, 163).
- 14.
At least three-fourths of the New Mexicans derived part or all of their income directly or indirectly from sheep in the view of historian Hallenbeck (1950, 299).
- 15.
- 16.
There were 380,000 sheep in New Mexico in 1850 and 830,000 in 1860, on the basis of official counts and estimates according to Coan (1925, 365).
- 17.
Anonymous (1962, 242): “where farmers have six or eight thousand horses or mules, forty thousand cattle, and twice as many sheep.” This is the only mention encountered of sizable numbers of other livestock besides sheep. For New Mexico as a whole, for most of the nineteenth century, sheep probably comprised 80–90 percent of the livestock total, in contrast to less than 50 percent in 1965; Abert (1962, 52).
- 18.
- 19.
Also, see Davis (1857, 204); again, his source was probably Gregg.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
In 1965 there were 969,000 sheep, 1,106,000 cattle, and 43,000 horses and mules in New Mexico according to the U.S. Department of Commerce (1965, 674).
- 23.
The periodic reports of the different Spanish governors contain some data on sheep numbers and sheep exports to Mexico, as in the previously mentioned reports of Governor Chacón for 1800 and 1803. Twitchell (1914, Vols. 1, 2) lists and describes documents in the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, but there is no indication of significant data on sheep numbers. The possibility of finding official data on sheep during the critical Mexican period seems unpromising. Also, unfortunately, the United States commercial agents in Santa Fe apparently never reported on such matters as livestock (M.L. Moorhead, pers. comm.).
- 24.
- 25.
For a discussion of this theme for the Great Plains and for pertinent references, see Clark (1956).
- 26.
The causes of reported poor stands of grass between 1843 and 1881 were poor soils, locally dry climates, and overgrazing, in the opinion of Antevs (1952, 378). In areas heavily grazed in the 1880s and after, recovery of the vegetation has often been quite slow, even where there has been protection and adequate rainfall.
- 27.
For a discussion of this theme, see Tuan and Everard (1964, 271–274).
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
For long-term stations in New Mexico, Leopold pointed out a significantly greater number of heavy rains in the second half of the nineteenth century than during the first half of the twentieth century (Leopold 1951b, 350). Following Leopold, high intensity rains are those with 1.00 inch or more of rain in 24 hours, and moderate intensity rains are those with 0.50–0.99 inch in 24 hours.
- 31.
Of the ninety maximum 24-hour storms at Santa Fe from 1849 to 1938, seventeen occurred from 1853 to 1856, sixteen in the 1770s, and only five in the 1880s (Thornthwaite et al. 1942, footnote 10, figure 14).
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Hunter, R., Doolittle, W.E. (2021). Livestock and Landscape Introducers: Richard Hunter and William E. Doolittle. In: WinklerPrins, A.M., Mathewson, K. (eds) Forest, Field, and Fallow. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42480-0_7
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