The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946 Page: 308
717 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
that ten-thousand loose cattle then remained as a remnant of larger herds
that had roved the forest slopes for almost a hundred years. The Hawaiian
realm believed, as do modern legislators, in protecting valuable livestock;
thus, a protective taboo was decreed by Kamehameha I. It was Vancouver
who had brought the first of these great hulks to Hawaii in the 1790's
as a goodwill gift to the native chieftains. During the protective period,
their multiplication was profuse not only on the Island of Hawaii but
on all the islands, so that until the first slaughtering in the early 1830's,
Oahu, Kauai, and Maui were also overrun by the shaggy longhorns,
claimed or befriended by no one.
Ranging high above Paauilo, these formed in a sense an isolated exten-
sion of the American and Texas cattle frontier. Here was the need once
again of the windmill, the Colt revolver, and the barbed wire fence. As
was the case on the western ranges of our own continent, these cattle,
increasing daily in number, unchecked by the ravages of man and nature
and enjoying the mild clime of aloha-land, were no small problem for
local farmers who often awoke to find them overrunning crops and
gardens. Indeed, native residents of the Kona Coast on Hawaii and of
the Honolulu highlands below the Pali on Oahu spent no little time in
constructing stone walls to keep these brutes out of their tilled acreage,
often the only stable source of food supply. A recent writer cited the
building of the pa aina "a rampart wall a fathom thick and shoulder
high" from Napoopoo to Hookena as proof of local desperation in the
days of scarce agricultural development. Many were led to suggest the
formation of a protective organization to combat the beasts. How similar
this to the recent preventive measures of the California and Australian
"rabbit drives!" What price cane, poi, and taro in Hawaii and lettuce
and corn in the southwest?
The eventual importation of pedigreed animals and the subsequent
rounding-up of the hungry lords ended the reign of the mavericks some-
time after 1850. Provisions for permanent paddocks and a regular water
supply gradually improved Island stock to the point of scientific com-
petition with herds beyond the coral shores far away and in other
lands . . . brethren these?
Today the giant Parker Ranch carries on in the best American Cowboy
and Rancho tradition. Branding, spaying of cows, the breeding of bulls,
and the roping of calves are all a part of the western nomenclature
adopted by the Kamaiina-rancheros. One might even find as many as
half a million animals on the hoof at one time there in these days. The
primitive "Jerseys" are a foresaken ancestry, supplanted by the modern
beef animal known as the purebred Hereford.
Like the American buffalo and the European boar, a few of the progeny
of Vancouver's wild herd, still unroped, untamed, and free will forever
seek their tropical forage high astride the volcano necks and cols of
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. These then are the little-known cousins of
"other-world herds" left to roam the untamed wastelands that are forever
the poetic hinterland of any soil, any clime.
Selma Metzenthin-Raunick has an article, "New Braunfels,308
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946, periodical, 1946; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146056/m1/341/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.