Americas’ first cowboys were enslaved Africans, ancient cow DNA suggests

[real expert]

Another misleading scientific article to push certain agendas...

Think “cowboy,” and you might picture John Wayne riding herd across the U.S. West. But the first cowboys lived in Mexico and the Caribbean, and most of them were Black.

That’s the conclusion of a recent analysis of DNA from 400-year-old cow bones excavated on the island of Hispaniola and at sites in Mexico. The work, published in Scientific Reports, also provides evidence that African cattle made it to the Americas at least a century earlier than historians realized.

The timing of these African imports—to the early 1600s—suggests the growth of cattle herds may have been connected to the slave trade, says study author Nicolas Delsol, an archaeozoologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “It changes the whole perspective on the mythical figure of the cowboy, which has been whitewashed over the 20th century.”
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The first cattle in the Americas came from Spain, brought by Christopher Columbus to the island of Hispaniola on his second voyage in 1493. More came in subsequent voyages in the early 1500s. The vast herds that later spread across the Americas, historians have assumed, descended from this small founding population of about 500 cows.

To understand the spread of cattle, Delsol scoured museum collections for cattle bones from postcontact Hispaniola and Mexico. The authors compared genetic signatures in the DNA from 21 cows found at early Spanish sites in Mexico and Haiti to known European and African breeds.

During the first century of European colonization, most cow bones correspond with varieties known from Spain. But one bone, from the grounds of an early Franciscan convent in the heart of modern-day Mexico City called Bellas Artes, yielded DNA matching a breed of cattle found only in Africa.

The sample dates to the early 1600s, more than 100 years before the first historical records of imported African cattle. “They can show this complex history from evidence we didn’t have before,” says Eduardo Corona Martinez, an archaeozoologist at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. “In the first wave, the cattle were Iberian or European,” says Corona Martinez, who helped excavate the Bellas Artes site but was not involved with the new analysis. “Later they introduced cattle from Africa.”


Colonizers may have been trying to adapt herds to tropical conditions in the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, Delsol says. “Bringing cattle that were more adapted to hot, wet environments could have been a deciding factor.”


The arrival of African cattle, meanwhile, coincides with a darker development. Until Europeans arrived, the region’s Indigenous population had no experience with large, domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, or sheep, mainstays of the colonial-era diet. As Spanish and Portuguese cattle herds in the New World grew, ranchers “needed trained, skilled workers, and African ranchers were more knowledgeable about raising cattle in tropical environments,” Delsol says. “Now, we have different lines of evidence that connect African ranchers and Spanish colonies.”


In the early 1600s, historical records show slave traders targeted African groups familiar with cattle herding, like the Fulani of modern-day Cameroon. The new study shows at least one cow was brought directly from the region at the same time, suggesting herders and their cattle might have come as a sort of package.


Modern American cattle are a mix of European and African breeds, researchers thought the African contribution came via Spain, or from cattle imported in the 19th century. “Here’s good evidence that a strongly African genetic marker shows up really early,” says Louisiana State University geographer Andrew Sluyter, who was not involved in the research. “It’s exciting confirmation of what the archival records were telling us.”


Corona Martinez says the study begins to fill a gap in knowledge about how European animals and crops changed ecosystems in the New World. “Not only do we see animals come from European sites but also from Africa,” he says. “It’s globalization.”


Sluyter says the find should help shift a fundamental misconception around the origins of an iconic American figure—the cowboy. Innovations like herding cattle from horseback and the lasso appeared first in the Americas at a time when most cowboys were enslaved Africans, spreading to Europe only later. “It’s debunking the idea enslaved Africans were simply the workers—the brawn, not the brains,” Sluyter says. “They created a lot of novel techniques.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/america-s-first-cowboys-were-enslaved-africans-ancient-cow-dna-suggests

 

[real expert]

This scientific study appears to be trying to obfuscate the fact that the original cowboys, known as vaqueros, were horse-mounted cattle herders descended from Spain and Spaniards. Thus, cowboy traditions originated in Spain, notably the hacienda system of medieval Spain. This type of cattle ranching spread over the Iberian Peninsula and was later introduced to the Americas. In fact, the Spaniards taught both Native Americans and enslaved Africans how to manage cattle from the backs of horses.... Therefore, claiming that the first cowboys in America were Black is both misleading and untrue. Many Black Americans believe that whites stole the cowboy culture from them because the original cowboys were Black.

Tbh, you can't blame Afrocentrists or other misguided Black Americans for believing they started it all, especially when there are so many people in academia who pander to them. Too many scholars, researchers are pushing and promoting liberal ideas while allowing their political beliefs to cloud their conclusions and interpretations of raw data.

 

[MOESAN]

This scientific study appears to be trying to obfuscate the fact that the original cowboys, known as vaqueros, were horse-mounted cattle herders descended from Spain and Spaniards. Thus, cowboy traditions originated in Spain, notably the hacienda system of medieval Spain. This type of cattle ranching spread over the Iberian Peninsula and was later introduced to the Americas. In fact, the Spaniards taught both Native Americans and enslaved Africans how to manage cattle from the backs of horses.... Therefore, claiming that the first cowboys in America were Black is both misleading and untrue. Many Black Americans believe that whites stole the cowboy culture from them because the original cowboys were Black.

Tbh, you can't blame Afrocentrists or other misguided Black Americans for believing they started it all, especially when there are so many people in academia who pander to them. Too many scholars, researchers are pushing and promoting liberal ideas while allowing their political beliefs to cloud their conclusions and interpretations of raw data.

Since the first lines I knew it was a woke paper in its aims. True facts as basis, biased analysis, as very often since a good bunch of years.
A good cattle breeder is not a cow-boy. The "brain"is not always by force the "hands" owner.

 

[norbert]

I don't think people are even aware of how much damage has already been done to the credibility of academia.

 

[Twilight]

Sub-Saharan Africa had some amazing Civilizations; some are still existing and haven't changed in thousands of years.
I wish the academic article writers wrote about Sub-Saharan African Civilizations. :/

 

[MOESAN]

Sub-Saharan Africa had some amazing Civilizations; some are still existing and haven't changed in thousands of years.
I wish the academic article writers wrote about Sub-Saharan African Civilizations. :/

Itsn't y take here.
They are trying to reread history. Africans cattle herders had surely some good knowledge about their own cattle and this knowledge could have been exploited by colonizators in America. But the mounted cow-boy's work is another thing and I doubt owners of cattle would have been too glad to leave them learn the work and leave them going with their stock to far away. Maybe am I wrong but?... ATW the Spanih conquistadors had already learned the work.

 

[real expert]

Itsn't y take here.
They are trying to reread history. Africans cattle herders had surely some good knowledge about their own cattle and this knowledge could have been exploited by colonizators in America. But the mounted cow-boy's work is another thing and I doubt owners of cattle would have been too glad to leave them learn the work and leave them going with their stock to far away. Maybe am I wrong but?... ATW the Spanih conquistadors had already learned the work.

Of course. However, African cattle herders' expertise in breeding cows adapted for tropical or hot climates does not imply that they were the original cowboys or ranchers. Plus, this study is also misleading in the sense that when people read that enslaved Africans were the first cowboys in the Americas, they think of Black Americans rather than Afro-Mexicans. I noticed claims and comments on social media and YouTube that Black Americans were the first cowboys...

And where can we find West African cattle herders' ranches and cowboy customs in Africa? There is no...

In contrast, Spain retained to some extent the traditions of ranching that resemble these cowboy traditions in the US.

The Andalusian event of the Sacas de la Yegua in the village of El Rocio. |

For instance, Spanish colonizers established ranches and cattle herding not only in New Spain, Mexico, but also in Argentina and Uruguay. The gauchos are the iconic traditional Argentine cowboys who are skilled in horse riding and cattle herding, and they also use tools like the lasso and boleadoras…

Gauchos from Argentina.

Besides, the claim that the original vaqueros, or cowboys, were Mexican isn't entirely true either...

 

[real expert]

I don't think people are even aware of how much damage has already been done to the credibility of academia.

Absolutely, the publication of poor or misleading research and scientific articles destroys trust in science.

Nevertheless, many people still appeal to authority, branding anyone who disagrees with, criticizes, or is skeptical of implausible conclusions of genetic studies as a conspiracy theorist, anti-science, or worse, a racist.


There is the real world, historical reality—and then there's the academic world, which interprets and views everything through a liberal leftist lens with an anti-European bent. It seems that academics use DNA, genetic studies to rewrite the past, rather than aligning them with archeological evidence and historical truths...