D
Within minutes, the Seventh Cavalry slaughtered 300
unarmed Native Americans, including several children. The
soldiers left the corpses to freeze on the ground. This event,
the Battle of Wounded Knee, brought the Indian wars—
and an entire era—to a bitter end.
A PERSONAL VOICE BLACK ELK
“ I did not know then how much was ended. When I look
back . . . I can still see the butchered women and children
lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch. . . .
And I can see that something else died there in the bloody
mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died
there. It was a beautiful dream.
”
—Black Elk Speaks
Cattle Becomes Big Business
As the great herds of buffalo disappeared, and Native
Americans were forced onto smaller and less desirable reserver-
ations, horses and cattle flourished on the plains. As cattle
ranchers opened up the Great Plains to big business, ranching
from Texas to Kansas became a profitable investment.
VAQUEROS AND COWBOYS
American settlers had never
managed large herds on the open range, and they learned
from their Mexican neighbors how to round up, rope,
brand, and care for the animals. The animals themselves,
the Texas longhorns, were sturdy, short-tempered breeds
accustomed to the dry grasslands of southern Spain.
Spanish settlers raised longhorns for food and brought
horses to use as work animals and for transportation.
As American as the cowboy seems today, his way of life stemmed directly
from that of those first Spanish ranchers in Mexico. The cowboy’s clothes, food,
and vocabulary were heavily influenced by the Mexican vaquero, who was the first
to wear spurs, which he attached with straps to his bare feet and used to control
his horse. His chaparreras, or leather overalls, became known as chaps. He ate
charqui, or “jerky”—dried strips of meat. The Spanish bronco caballo, or “rough
horse” that ran wild, became known as a bronco or bronc. The strays, or mesteños,
were the same mustangs that the American cowboy tamed and prized. The
Mexican rancho became the American ranch. Finally, the English words corral and
NEZ PERCE IN OREGON
Forced off their tribal lands in
Wallowa County, Oregon, in 1877,
the Nez Perce are returning almost
120 years later. 1999 figures put
the number of Nez Perce in the
Oregon area at around 3,000.
In 1997, Wallowa community
leaders obtained a grant to devel-
op the Wallowa Band Nez Perce
Trail Interpretive Center—a cultur-
al center that hosts powwows and
other activities to draw tourists.
“I never thought I’d see the
day,” said Earl (Taz) Conner, a
direct descendant of Chief
Joseph, the best known of the
Nez Perce. And, in the words of
Soy Redthunder, another tribe
member, “[We] look at it as
homecoming.”
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