To really understand the American cowboy of the Old West, it is first necessary to look at the business in which he played a key role. Interestingly, the herding and transport of cattle in North America was not invented by the nineteenth-century American cowboy. On the contrary, the business of tending cattle had been going on in North America for more than three hundred years.

Coming from Spain

Cattle are not native to the Americas. They first arrived with Columbus, on his second voyage to the New World. Along with the supplies and materials necessary to establish a Spanish settlement—farm tools, seeds, chickens, and goats—were horses and cattle. The Spanish colonists who arrived with Columbus were intending to bring the best of their country to this new, unknown land.

Much prized by the Spaniards...