20 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN August 2025 PAST Stocking the West BOB HOUGH | CONTRIBUTING WRITER When the United States of America celebrated its centennial in 1876, in part by hosting the World’s Fair at Philadelphia, it had fulfilled one of its major goals of the country to stretch from “sea to shining sea.” This was all part of what it considered at the time as its Manifest Destiny – a phrase coined by journalist John L. O’Sullivan of the New York Morning News – which was the country’s God-given duty to spread its concept of civilization, capitalism and Christianity across the continent. For more detail, please refer to the “Manifest Destiny” article in the April/May issue of Nebraska Cattleman, page 30. Clearing the Land With the end of the Civil War, the United States’ attention turned to exploiting the vast natural resources of the Great Plains. This involved eliminating bison from the range so land could be freed up for grazing and farming, which was being done with tremendous speed and efficiency. Native Americans were also herded onto ever shrinking reservations – a situation that was not satisfactory to most indigenous people. The situation was exasperated by broken treaties and graft in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which led to a series of Plains Indian Wars. Due to numbers and supplies, Native Americans invariably lost each of these wars despite having success in many of the battles within the wars. Native Americans’ most notable victory occurred in June 1876 with the defeat of Lt. Col. George A. Custer’s calvary regiment at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. However, it was just a decade later, on Sept. 4, 1886, when Geronimo and his band of approximately 30 Apache men, women and children surrendered to Gen. Nelson Miles, after being pursued relentlessly by Miles’ estimated 3,000 to 5,000 cavalry and infantry for four months. Although there would be a few flare ups later like the Ghost Dances in 1890, the surrender of Geronimo was effectively the end of the Indian Wars. Longhorns, Railroads and Stockyards During the Civil War, feral Mexican cattle, more commonly known as Longhorns, greatly increased in numbers throughout Texas and the Southwest, with some estimates putting the herd at 26 million head. This was quite an explosion in numbers considering the first ancestors of these cattle arrived in Texas in 1540 when Spanish conquistadors drove the first 500 head across the Rio Grande River. Railroads had also expanded rapidly, having already linked the Midwest and eastern United States by the end of the war. By 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad stretched from Omaha to Sacramento, Calif., with other branches west soon to follow, Cattle Trails of the 1870s American West. Public domain.
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