The Sheep Industry of Territorial New Mexico
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository History ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2-14-2014 Livestock, Land, and Dollars: The heepS Industry of Territorial New Mexico Jon M. Wallace Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds Recommended Citation Wallace, Jon M.. "Livestock, Land, and Dollars: The heS ep Industry of Territorial New Mexico." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/80 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in History ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Jon Wallace History This thesis is approved, and is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the thesis committee: Dr. Samuel Truett, Chairman Dr. Durwood Ball Dr. Jason Scott Smith i LIVESTOCK, LAND, AND DOLLARS: THE SHEEP INDUSTRY OF TERRITORIAL NEW MEXICO BY JON M. WALLACE PREVIOUS DEGREES A.B., University of California, Berkeley Ph.D., Harvard University THESIS Submitted in partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS HISTORY The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December 2013 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my thanks to my thesis advisor Dr. Sam Truett for his continuing support, encouragement, guidance, insightful comments, and suggestions for useful lines of inquiry throughout the development of this project. I wish also to thank Dr. Durwood Ball and Dr. Jason Smith for critical readings of the manuscript and useful discussions of the work. And finally I wish to express my debt to the late Dr. Ferenc Szasz, with whom I had interesting and encouraging discussions early on in this project. iii LIVESTOCK, LAND, AND DOLLARS: THE SHEEP INDUSTRY OF TERRITORIAL NEW MEXICO by Jon Wallace A.B., Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 1966 Ph.D., Physics, Harvard University, 1971 ABSTRACT Sheep growing constituted New Mexico’s leading industry for much of the territorial period and had been of major importance over the preceding two centuries, since the days of Spanish sovereignty. This work is a dedicated economic history of the industry during the territorial period, a time during which sheep growing underwent a series of dramatic changes from the traditional Spanish practices of open-range grazing and large trail drives serving Mexican markets to capitalized sheep and wool production on managed lands, serving vastly larger American markets. The herds multiplied tremendously, while leadership and control of the industry shifted from a small cohort of wealthy, landed Hispanic families to well-connected and well-capitalized Anglo merchants and growers, recently arrived in the territory. This shift, how and why it came about, is the central theme of this work. It is shown to be largely the result of impersonal economic forces, as New Mexico was gradually absorbed, economically and socially, into the American mainstream. The role of capital was central. iv Note on Terminology A few words about terminology are appropriate here. All peoples of New Mexico who were not American Indian, truly Spanish, or of Spanish-Indian mixed race were, and still are, commonly called Anglos or Anglo-Americans and will be identified as such in the text. Thus, the German Jewish merchants and the French and Italian priests who arrived in New Mexico during the nineteenth century were, in this sense, considered Anglos. The term Hispanic is used in the text to designate the Spanish-Indian mixed-race population of New Mexico, the predominant demographic group during the territorial period. In both scholarly and popular works, these people are sometimes called Native New Mexicans, Hispanos, or Chicanos. In the past they were sometimes called Spanish- Americans, a misnomer. Anglos of the territorial era usually called these people Mexicans, as they often called themselves, an accurate designation before the annexation, but not after. For purposes of this study, Indians of all tribes except the sedentary Pueblos are collected under the heading of Nomadic Tribes. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES viii LIST OF TABLES ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2 HISPANIC FOUNDATIONS OF NEW MEXICO’S SHEEP INDUSTRY, 1540-1846 18 CHAPTER 3 THE AMERICANS ARRIVE, 1807-1860 44 CHAPTER 4 THE WOOL INITIATIVE 75 CHAPTER 5 STOCKING THE WESTERN RANGES 98 CHAPTER 6 SHEEP AND MERCANTILE CAPITALISM 124 CHAPTER 7 FRANK BOND AND INNOVATIVE ORGANIZATION 168 CHAPTER 8 THE CAPITALIZATION OF NEW MEXICO SHEEP RANCHING 195 CHAPTER 9 MONTAGUE STEVENS, CAPITAL, RISK, AND LABOR 218 CHAPTER 10 THE END OF THE OPEN RANGE 249 CHAPTER 11 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 267 APPENDIX A INTERPRETATION OF CENSUS AND TAX ASSESSMENT DATA 292 APPENDIX B NEW MEXICAN SHEEP AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 295 APPENDIX C SPANISH-MEXICAN LAND GRANTS 300 APPENDIX D THE SHEEP HERDER OF THE SPANISH-MEXICAN PERIOD 302 APPENDIX E ALFALFA 306 vi APPENDIX F THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 307 APPENDIX G MONETARY COMPARISONS 309 NOTES 311 REFERENCES 358 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1. Population of New Mexico 55 Figure 3.2. New Mexico Livestock Populations 56 Figure 4.1. New Mexico Wool Production 77 Figure 4.2. Total United States Cotton and Woolen Manufactures 84 Figure 5.1. Annual Earnings for Live Sheep and Wool, Cattle, and Farm Crops 113 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1. Sheep Ownership, 1858 California Drive 71 Table 4.1. Wool Production, Fall 1899 and Spring 1900 86 ix Chapter 1 Introduction When Anglo-Americans began traveling to New Mexico over the Santa Fe Trail, the first sign of life they saw upon approaching the settlements was often a herd of sheep on a hillside, usually watched over by a lone flock master.1 This was hardly surprising since sheep played a very important role in village life. As The New Mexico Bluebook succinctly stated later in 1913, “The backbone of industrial husbandry in New Mexico for at least 200 years has been sheep raising, and it is still chief among the income producing occupations of the people.”2 In fact, sheep growing had been a leading commercial activity from the Spanish colonial period until the twentieth century. A small cohort of Hispanic mercantile families, over a period of many decades, had built the industry and amassed considerable wealth, largely in the form of livestock. By the time of the U.S. military occupation in 1846, they were exporting their stock to Mexican markets in massive annual drives down the Camino Real. Hispanic New Mexicans, having initiated and, over the years, succeeded in large- scale sheep husbandry and the associated mercantilism under quite difficult conditions, were seemingly well positioned to continue to dominate this enterprise, while extending it to the much larger economic arena that opened up after the U.S. annexation. However, Hispanic dominance did not persist. The territory’s sheep industry became linked to the large and growing American market for mutton and an entirely new market for wool. And while the human population of the territory essentially tripled over the half century following the annexation, the sheep industry grew more than forty-fold, as measured by 1 annual revenues.3 (See Fig. 3.1, Population of New Mexico, Fig. 3.2, New Mexico Livestock Populations, and Fig. 5.1, Annual Earnings for Sheep and Wool, Cattle, and Farm Crops.) In the process, well-connected Anglo merchants and growers assumed leadership and came to control the bulk of the industry through their activities in marketing, finance, and capital-intensive husbandry, even as Hispanic herders actually tended most of the flocks and Hispanic sheepmen still owned a large fraction of the territory’s sheep.4 Subject of the Thesis At the human level, the sheep industry was an arena of New Mexico life that was, put simply, taken over by Anglo-Americans. Characterized more accurately, Anglos and American capitalism established hegemony over the industry. Economic reconfigurations under unbalanced circumstances, as the situation here might be described, are often seen as venality driven and massively unfair and detrimental to native populations. The take-over of the New Mexico sheep industry, such as it was, was arguably more subtle in its driving forces. Venality unquestionably was an issue. But impersonal economic forces, about which little has been written, played a major role. David Montejano has developed this line of thought in the context of his broad-based, economic and sociological history of Texas.5 The workings of these forces underlie the central story of the thesis: the realignment of the New Mexico sheep industry from Hispanic to Anglo dominance during the territorial period. How this came about will be the focus of the work. At the heart of the various economic forces at work was capital, largely from extra-territorial sources. It was essential not just to the growth and 2 prosperity of the New Mexico sheep industry after the annexation, but to its very survival. The story of the sheep industry is complicated by the fact that, aside from the shift in leadership and control, the industry underwent a multifaceted transformation that contributed to, was even an integral part of, the shift. The markets not only grew considerably but were widely scattered throughout the United States as the nation then existed. Wool, once a quantity of minor economic importance, became a major territorial export along with mutton. Rail shipment of wool, and later sheep, to market became the norm. Open-range grazing, the tradition since Spanish colonial times, ultimately gave way to farm production under controlled conditions. Scientific range management also became a consideration. New Mexico sheep breeders became strongly tied to feeder farmers throughout the Rocky Mountain-Great Plains region. And while it had initially emerged from an agricultural subsistence economy, the sheep industry became capital- intensive.