The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991 Page: 632
692 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
parties employing any means to survive. At the outset, farmers and
ranchers of all kinds were united against Native Americans. Then, Bill
O'Neal explains, beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury when the range began to fill up, the opponents in the violent
struggle over land became big cattle ranchers and little sheepmen.
Much has been written on cattle ranching and on the cowboy, a kind
of rustic knight on Walter Prescott Webb's Great Plains, while less has
been written on the sheep industry and sheepmen. In part this prefer-
ence can be explained by image and stereotyping. O'Neal writes, "By
the time trouble with sheepmen became widespread, the American
press had begun to lionize the cowboy as the most admirable cavalier of
a fading frontier" (p. 3). On the other hand, the image of the sheep-
man suffered for various reasons. O'Neal quotes one cowboy as saying,
"There ain't nothin' dumber than a sheep except the man who herds
'em.'" Sheepmen were called every imaginable name from mutton
punchers to scab herders. Sheep were called everything from maggots
to baa-a-ahs. "Sheeped out" meant to cattlemen a range destroyed by
over-grazing by sheep.
O'Neal has written a book describing the violent scenario of cattle-
men versus sheepmen in an attempt to close this gap in western litera-
ture. Chapter 1, "Cattlemen, Sheepmen, and Open Range," is a broad
and interpretive chapter; it establishes the general economic frame-
work within which the rest of the book is placed. Chapter 2, "Trouble
in Texas," deals not only with Texas but also with the peripheral areas
adjacent to Texas, like the northeastern plains of New Mexico. Chap-
ters 3 and 4 deal with the history of this struggle in Colorado and Ari-
zona. In chapter 5, "Miscellaneous Hostilities Across the West," the au-
thor groups areas that do not fit into his other state-centered chapters
but where sheep-cattle range violence occurred. The last four chapters
and the climactic conclusion of the book are centered on Wyoming,
which includes the violent and colorful figure of Tom Horn.
This well-documented and well-written book is illustrated with photo-
graphs and maps. It will be a valuable asset for economic historians and
westerners.
New Mexzco Hzghlands University GUILLERMO Lux
Rzch Grass and Sweet Water: Ranch Life wzth the Koch Matador Cattle Com-
pany. By John Lincoln. (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1989. Pp. xv+148. Acknowledgments, prologue, illustra-
tions, maps, epilogue, index. $19.95.)
This book is the story of the post-World War II ranching empire cre-
ated by Fred Koch, a wealthy Kansas industrialist. The heart of the632
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991, periodical, 1991; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101214/m1/710/?rotate=270: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.