North American Cattle Ranching Frontiers

The reinterpretation of how ranching evolved in the New World is broad, including discussions of grazing and foraging and their relation to vegetation and climate - that is, cultural ecology - cultural diffusion, and local innovation. Above all, Jordan emphasizes place and region, illustrating the great variety of ranching practices.

This first ever in-depth, cross-border study of the cattle ranching frontiers on the northern Great Plains of North America argues that though they lived on different sides of the fortyninth parallel, the first cattlemen on the western Canadian prairies and in the state of Montana shared a common history.

In this volume, Andrew Sluyter demonstrates that Africans played significant creative roles in establishing open-range cattle ranching in the Americas. In so doing, he provides a new way of looking at and studying the history of land, labour, property and commerce in the Atlantic world.

Presents a colourful view of cattle ranching in central B.C.

Despite being neighbouring provinces with long ranching histories, British Columbia and Alberta saw their ranching techniques develop quite differently. As most ranching styles were based on one of the two dominant styles in use south of the border, BC ranchers tended to adopt the California style whereas Alberta took its lead from Texas. But the different practices actually go back much further. Cattle cultures in southwestern Spain, sub-Saharan Africa and the British highlands all shaped the basis of North American ranching. Digging deep into the origins of cowboy culture, Ken Mather tells the stories of men and women on the ranching frontiers of British Columbia and Alberta and reveals little-known details that help us understand the beginnings of ranching in these two provinces.

In Frontier Cattle Ranching in the Land and Times of Charlie Russell, Warren Elofson debunks the myth of the American "wild west" and the Canadian "mild west" by demonstrating that cattlemen on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel shared a common experience. Focusing on Montana, Southern Alberta, Southern Saskatchewan, and the well-known figure of Charlie Russell - an artist and storyteller from that era who spent time on both sides of the border - Elofson examines the lives of cowboys and ranch owners, looking closely at the prevalence of drunkenness, prostitution, gunplay, rustling, and vigilante justice in both Canada and the United States.

La Florida explores a Spanish thread to early American history that is unfamiliar or even unknown to most Americans. As this book uncovers, it was Spanish influence, and not English, which drove America’s early history. By focusing on America’s Spanish heritage, this collection of stories complicates and sometimes challenges how Americans view their past, which author Kevin Kokomoor refers to as “the country’s founding mythology.” Dig deeper into Hispanic and Caribbean history, and how important happenings elsewhere in the Spanish colonial world influenced the discovery and colonization of the American Southeast. Follow Spanish sailors discovering the edges of a new continent and greedy, violent conquistadors quickly moving in to find riches, along with Catholic missionaries on their search for religious converts. Learn how Spanish colonialism in Florida sparked the British’s plans for colonization of the continent and influenced some of the most enduring traditions of the larger Southeast. The key history presented in the book will challenge the general assumption that whatever is important or interesting about this country is a product of its English past.