Cattle and Sheep from Old to New Spain: Historical Antecedents Karl W. Butzer Department of Geography, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 Abstract. The transfer of cattle and sheep the Marismas of Sevilla. This evidence may be from Spain to Mexico during the sixteenth explained by the interplay of cattle owners century raises questions about regional evo­ and cattle herders as they adjusted to a new lution and variability of livestock economies ecology in the tropical lowlands. in the source area,·the regional and socioeco­ l<ey Words: agrosystem, diffusion, Mesta, Mexi­ nomic roots of the emigrants, and the eco­ co, Spain, ranching, transhumance. logical and economic integration of spedfic animals, management methods, and related products within New Spain. Such issues of dif­ fusion, cultural adaptation and transformation must be disentangled before interpretation is iJL TURAL and historical geographers attempted, and this paper focuses on the Old working in eastern North America have World antecedents. Traditional nineteenth­ until recendy focused almost exdu~ century patterns of livestock herdillg in dif­ sively on European-derived culture spheres, ferent regions of the Iberian Peninsula were viewing native American contributions as mi­ already established in Roman times and nor or peripheral. By comparison, Latin Amer~ changed but tittle during the Islamic period. kanists, both geographers and anthropologists, Long..cfjstance sheep transhumance is verified have concentrated their attention on indige­ prior to the Christian reconquest and was nous roots, paying only nominal attention to greatly amplified thereafter. Yet late Medieval Iberian components. Spain was not a great ranching frontier, but Latin Americanists, in their perception of an agrosystem in whfch farming and livestock Spain as seen from Hispanic America, have raising always formed a complementary but tended to assume a monolithic, common cul­ interlinked economy. This duality was ex­ tural hearth, even though sixteenth~century pressed in different forms of land ownership: Spain consisted of a dozen or so culturally dis­ cultivated land was intricately subdivided and tinctive regions {Foster 1960). On the other carried clear title, while pasture zones re­ hand, North Americanist geographers have mained to some degree in the public domain. souiht to disentangle the multiple strands of Sheep raising, both within the mixed, Medi­ European elements intertwined in the different terranean economy and in the form of long­ culture spheres that emerged between the St_ distance transhumance (the Mesta}, was Lawrence River and the Georgia seaboard. They broadly familiar throughout Castile and was have also been explidt!y interested in what reflected in sjmilar counterparts on the Mex­ Harris {1977) has called "the simplification of ican plateau. But cattle raising was small-scale Europe overseas," i.e., the process whereby the and of subordinate importance in Spain, ex­ great cultural variety-encompassed by the North cept in the estuarine marshland below Seville. European immigrants was reduced to a much Whereas the early cattle owners in Mexico simpler and relatively homogeneous American came from all over Spain, their highly exten­ and Canadian cultural repertoire. sive management style appears to derive from These different preoccupations of research· Mmls ofL'.e A.,:;socfaric:in of knerie;in Ge<og~hert 76(1), '1%8, 2.9-56 11:l Cc,pyrigh! 1988 b~ As,;oci~ticr, cf Am<,rk~n Gecg,ap!-,er~ ----- ~----------------------------,,30 Butzer Cattle and Sheep in Spain 31 ers working north and south of the Rio Grande adapted and how societies acculturate or crys- j Spanish socioeconomic compo_nents, fa­ (MOrner 1976). They would have come over­ are, of course, reasonable in the context of their tallize into new configurations. 1' voring the crystallization of new, fully trans­ whelmingly from the areas of Sevilla and Palos, study areas. In Texas, situated on the border This study is the result of comparative work { formed, sociocultural and ecological­ so that the contribution of Lower Andaluda will between the North and Latin American culture on Hispanic livestock raising in Spain and Mex- 1: e.conomic modes. have been substantially greater than suggested worlds, it is possible to see the benefits of com­ ico that began with William Doolittle's sugges- ¾ by Boyd-Bowman's figures. This argument implies that Old World an­ plementarity between the two approaches. tion that cattle raising in the Guadalquivir es- ~ The lack of information on emigrant farmers tecedents and New World transformation There are several ranching traditions in Texas, tuary of Spain and in the Panuco estuary of is particularly frustrating. Farmers were not al­ f should each be examined in their own right ultimately derived from different European Mexico may have had close historical and eco- ic lowed to emigrate lega!ly. But many rural em­ before broader generalizations are attempted. roots (Jordan 1981; Jackson 1986). Iberian an­ logical linkages. A productive collaboration be- igrants escaped identification as soldiers, as the J The present analysis attempts to take that first tecedents appear to have had considerable im­ tween Doolittle, Terry Jordan, and myself fol- 1: retainers or servants of prominent men, or as step by focusing on the historical evolution and pact both indirectly, via Florida and the Caro­ lowed, in which each of us sought to unravel once-only sailors who had no intention of re­ J adaptation of livestock raising on the Iberian linas, as well as directly, via Mexico, in regard the broader problem from different vistas and f: turning with their ships. But even so, we cannot Peninsula until the sixteenth century. A parallel to basic stock, management strategies, and the experiences. From my own perspective, one of know to what degree Spanish agrotechnology study of the development of sheep transhu­ details of associated material culture and social the central questions is the matter of regional was implanted in the New World through the mance in north-central Mexico, fo!lowing an customs. But such features did not come di­ roots in the Iberian Peninsula for key elements process of spontaneous migration. It is equally abortive attempt at pioneer cattle raising in the rectly from Spain, but from the West Indies and of agrotechnology introduced to Mexico by plausible to see the early transfer of livestock Bajfo, has been initiated and served to sharpen the Gulf lowlands of Mexico (Doolittle and Jor­ Spanish settlers. A second question concerns to New Spain as the collective result of deci­ the focus of the present paper. dan 1987; Doolittle 1987), where Iberian cattle patterns of stock-raising and use of animal sions by individual colonizers, of the dispro­ raising was first adapted to new economic and products in these specific Spanish source areas portional influence of aristocratic settlers with ecological conditions and significantly trans­ during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A agricultural backgrounds, of royal edicts or pol­ formed in the course of a century or two. third question concerns the ecological suit­ Regional Roots icy, and of the missionaries who were so influ­ An analogy is provided by the mission irri­ ability of specific animals, management meth- ential in transforming rural economies. gation systems of San Antonio, the origins of ods, and their products-as components of an It is first necessary to identify the background Another shortcoming is that the emigration which are equa!ly complex. That irrigation integrated economy in different environments of the early Spanish herd owners in Mexico. details at present are limited to the sixteenth served and was at !east maintained by Texas and culture complexes of Colonial Mexico. Fortunately, the archival data for legal immi­ century. Emigration peaked during 1601-25, Indians, although the missions were founded It bears emphasis that specific culture traits gration to the New World have been meticu­ when an annual average of 4450 persons sailed by Franciscans and possibly craftsmen from are not simply drawn from a variety of source lously analyzed by Boyd-Bowman (1973, 1976a}. for the New World {MOrner 1976). During the central Mexico (Habig 1976), with the tech­ areas i'n one country and reassembled in For the sixteenth century, they include source years 1528-91, the population of southwestern nology and water laws subsequently modified another: areas for more than 17,000 emigrants to New Spain was increasing dramatically, with an av­ by settlers from the Canary Islands (Glick 1972). Spain. The great majority came from the west­ erage annual growth rate of 0.62 percent in But Mexican and Southwestern irrigation de­ (1) Historical accident and cultural selection ern half of Castile, with Lower Andalucfa and Extremadura and 0.57 percent in Lower An­ rives from both indigenous and Iberian roots drew different segments of society from dif­ Extremadura accounting for just under 50 per­ dalucia (Molinie-Bertrand 1985). In at least some (Meyer 1984). So how exactly does one distin­ ferent regions, introducing a range of al­ cent (see Figs. 1 and 2). For our purposes, such areas this population explosion had begun al­ guish Indian and Spanish irrigation? Equally ternative socioeconomic components from aggregate data can be misleading, however, most a century earlier, and for SO communities perplexing, was Canary Island water manage­ Spain. since 46 percent of the sixteenth-century em­ in the hinterland of Sevilla the growth rate 1433- ment different from earlier Spanish contribu­ (2) Whatever the pull factors, these selected igrants to all destinations apparently came from 1528 was 0.78 percent per year (Ponsot 1980). tions to hydraulics in central Mexico? strands of emigration were drawn in differ­ urban areas (Boyd-Bowman 1976a). A detailed But a strategic sample of parish registers shows Such questions are not purely academic. They ent proportions to different colonies of study of the 1900 emigrants of 1595-98 gives that the number of rural births in Andalucia are fundamental to understanding how Old destination in the Americas.